Forget Midgar
by J. Riot
Summary: After inadvertantly saving Cloud's life, Reno finds himself an increasingly unreluctant caregiver, much to his surprise. Follows game canon only, not AC, with a Shrina family backstory that some would refer to as AU, and slash.
1. Chapter 1

Forget Midgar

" His memories felt odd, as if he didn't know where they belonged, all jumbled in a forgotten toy box in his mind. But now he was back in the world of the ordinary, things like road dust under his fingernails and a sea breeze stinging his eyes . . ."

-Leah S. Baird

1.

It's noon in Midgar, or what's left of Midgar, and my shoulders are burning. Meteor tore a hole in the sky, and that hole is making the sunlight more dangerous: or that's what the scientists that are still around tell us. I'm no scientist. All I know is that it's as hot as a motherfucker out here, and I'm tired, hungry, and want a drink.

Make that_ need_ a drink.

It's been two weeks since I came here from Kalm Town, where I was residing peacefully enough – unemployed, sleeping away half the day, drinking myself into a stupor nightly with Rude. If it hadn't been for that little busybody bitch Tifa Lockheart and her bullshit Midgar Disaster Relief project, that's where I'd be now – in a hotel bed in Kalm Town, blissfully sleeping off a hangover. But no. Two weeks ago she breezed into town with her strongman, Barrett, and they dragged all the former Shinra employees back to the hellhole that is Midgar.

She and the rest of her tyrannical organization threatened to charge us as war criminals if we didn't comply. The sawed-off shot gun I've been keeping with me since anarchy came onto the scene a few months ago might have said otherwise, but Elena broke down – she has guilt issues – and agreed to go. Rude and I didn't want to abandon her, so here we are.

I was given a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and thrust into the wreckage with the rest of the do-gooder idiots. Up ahead I can see most of them working – Tifa skipping from slave to slave with a clipboard, Barrett lifting steel beams with his bare hands (or, _hand_, I guess I should say), Scarlet pouting in her utility duds and picking up one pebble at a time, Elena working with the kind of diligence that only remorse provides, and Rude, walking toward me, eating a sandwich and carrying – no – it can't be . . .

_A six pack of beer_!

I don't bother asking Rude how he can eat his lunch here, where everything stinks of unrefined mako, burning rubber and plain ole death. I wouldn't put much past Rude, at this point – he's not the most observant or sensitive fellow, and sometimes I wonder if he's even noticed that the world has, in a sense, ended. I just hold out my hands as he tosses me a beer, catch it, and cradle it to me like a long lost child.

" Where did you . . . !" I stutter in grateful disbelief as I pop open the top. The beer is warm and flat, but heavenly after so much deprivation.

" Sector one – under the counter of one of the looted convenience stores," Rude tells me, grinning and opening one for himself.

" You went all the way back to Sector One to look for beer?" I ask, not surprised that Rude would do it, but surprised that he could slip past Tifa's eagle eye.

" Nope, I found it when we were working there last week," Rude says, dodging my instant punch of fury – he's been holding out on me for a whole week!

" I was saving it for a special occasion!" he insists in his defense.

" Rude, what the hell is special about today?" I ask, looking around at the same thing we see everyday: a desolate, twisted landscape that smells and feels like the pit of hell.

" I got laid last night," he tells me proudly, raising his eyebrows and taking another long gulp of beer. I snort in laughter.

" By which of the three women we know?" I ask, looking around at the people working nearby.

" Scarlet!" Rude whispers happily, and I roll my eyes.

" Oh, shacking up with a Shinra," I say darkly, not without a little stabbing feeling in my chest. " I see you've learned nothing through my experience."

" That was different," Rude says. " Things were – different – then."

What he's really trying to say is that I don't have much room to talk, that he knows that if Rufus were still alive I would still be trailing after him like a lusty puppy. He's right, of course. But that doesn't mean I'm going to condone his fooling around with Rufus's twin sister, queen bitch and pain in the ass extraordinaire.

I'm set to lecture him when Tifa stomps over to where we're standing, a look of hellfire on her face.

" Drinking on the job?" she says, eyeing our beers. " And I won't even bother asking where you got that."

" It's lunchtime," Rude says obliviously, beaming at her.

" If you've got nothing else to do, then one of you can run a little errand for me," she says smartly, glancing, of course, at me. As much as she probably wants to punish Rude, she knows by now that asking him to run an unsupervised errand is an exercise in futility.

" What?" I groan, hoping that whatever it is it will at least take me out of the wrecked city for a bit.

" I need you to go back to the dorms and find Cloud," she says, and I can hear a hint of embarrassment in her voice. She's been acting as the psychotic Cloud Stife's volunteer nursemaid for as long as I've been here, and it's pretty obvious why. Meanwhile her charge has been madly flouncing around, telling anyone who'll listen all about our Planet's Savior, a girl he was in love with who Sephiroth killed. According to Cloud her 'spirit energy' saved the planet from Meteor and some kind of alien that was trying to destroy the world – obviously a lot of wackjob nonsense from someone who can't deal with his grief.

And I know about dealing with grief. So I can't cut him a break for losing it. I've been working hard as hell to keep my head above water since Rufus died. I could have saved him, just like Cloud could have saved his girlfriend from Sephiroth. But I was too late, or too weak. And that's on my mind everyday. But I'm still standing – I haven't disintegrated into the kind of blubbering mess Cloud has become, I haven't started naming Rufus a lesser deity and railing against anyone who opposes my plans to build statues of him in every major city.

" What's the old Cloud-ster done now?" I ask, unable to hide a spiteful smirk. After all, Tifa's the one who dragged me here: if she wants my help on her hopeless, pointless mission to try to clean up a city that was never clean to begin with, then she's going to have to deal with my antagonism.

" He hasn't done anything," she says curtly. " He simply didn't report for clean up duty this morning."

" Maybe he's about as enthusiastic about cleaning up Midgar as I am," I suggest, raising an eyebrow. She glares at me.

" Cloud cares very much about the welfare of the planet," she says tightly. " He works in memory of Aeris," she adds, self-depreciating.

Aeris – that was the name of "The Ancient," or the "Savior," as some of Cloud's disciples have already taken to calling her. No one knows exactly what saved this planet from certain doom, but some chick Hojo used to have us chase after in Sector Five seems an unlikely answer.

" Just please look for him in the dorms," Tifa says with a sigh. " He probably overslept."

" Sure thing," I say, dropping my shovel and turning to go, happy to be free of work for a few hours. Even if I find Cloud on the way to the dorms I'll still linger in the outer limits of the city for as long as I can – maybe I can talk Cloud into hanging around with me. I doubt it will be very hard – I'll just ask him to tell me – again – about Aeris and her marvelous sacrifice.

The lower levels on the outside of the city were not destroyed by Meteor – Sector Four in particular remained pretty decently intact. Tifa's little operation has taken over an abandoned apartment building there and set it up as dormitories for the relief workers. Elena and I share an apartment there, on the tenth floor. She didn't feel safe living alone, so I volunteered to move in with her. I offer her protection and scintillating conversation, she offers me the occasional home-cooked meal and comfort when I go into Rufus-mode and break down. It's a charmed life, really.

Cloud lives with the other former members of Avalanche in the nicer apartments on the top floor. Each of them has their own place – Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, Cid Highwind - a badass dude from Rocket town who lives with his girlfriend –Vincent - a real quiet and solitary guy who reminds me of Cloud without the crazy ravings - Reeve, who I worked with at Shinra and who gets on my nerves, and Yuffie, an obnoxious little teenager Rude has told me he "wouldn't mind banging," though apparently he's settled for Scarlet.

The elevator in the building no longer works, of course. I take the stairs – fifteen flights up to the top. There is no air conditioning anymore, either, and by the time I get to the sixth floor I begin to wonder if this assignment is really much of a break at all. But anything, really, is better than shoveling away the sooty remains of Midgar. I don't think Tifa realizes – or, perhaps, cares – that doing so is a little more than physically painful for me. I grew up in Midgar. I lived there my whole life, and the man I loved (however resentfully) died in the first cosmic strike against the black city. When Diamond Weapon took the Shinra tower down Rufus was inside. Against my advice. Against my pleading.

He had been waiting there that night for Sephiroth. It was shortly after he had at last confirmed what he had long suspected – that the silver haired hellbeast was his brother. Sephiroth had been raised by Hojo, and told that his mother was Jenova, the name of some rogue cells Hojo had scraped from a frozen monster. But it wasn't true – Hojo had injected himself with the cells before he raped Lucrecia, a lab assistant. Sephiroth was the product of the assault. President Shinra had then forced Lucrecia into marrying him to keep her quiet and close at hand. The baby was surrendered to Hojo, and Lucrecia would go on to give the President a pair of twin heirs before she faked her own death when Rufus was ten, finally escaping the cage Shinra and Hojo had made for her.

It was something I had heard a lot about in the past year, when Rufus was able to learn the truth following his father's murder. Rufus had thought their shared, sick family history would give him a bargaining chip with Sephiroth. He wanted so badly for Shinra to be the one to reign Sephiroth in, to save the world and therefore maintain his tight grip on it.

At least, that's what he told me. I think he just wanted to know his brother. I think he thought Sephiroth could help him understand his own anger, his own penchant for destruction. He arranged to meet him at Shinra headquarters that day that Diamond weapon came. He forbade me to be present. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing, a feeling that I would never see him again. Or maybe that's just something I tell myself now. Either way, I'll never know how the brothers' conversation went.

When I finally reach the fifteenth floor my mind is spinning. I've tried not to be alone too much since Rufus's death – when I am I'll start going over the events, all the insane circumstances that led up to it, and what I could have done differently, how I could have saved him. With the distraction of other people I can sometimes get around thinking about these things, and so I've tried to keep my friends close.

Out of breath, I walk down the hall toward Cloud's room. I've been up here a few times to visit Cid, who Rude and I have grown friendly with since we came here. He pointed out everyone's rooms when he showed us around, and I go to the one that I remember as Cloud's and knock loudly on the door.

" Cloud," I call inside. " Wake up. Tifa wants you." I snort at the double entendre.

There is no response. I think about turning around and checking down in the lobby, where the volunteers – and captives, like me – gather for meals and to kill time by playing cards or mumbling quietly about how they miss having mako energy.

Something makes me try the door knob, though. When I do, it opens, unlocked. I hesitate for a moment, call Cloud's name a few more times, then open the door completely and step inside.

The apartment looks immaculate, unused. The small kitchen is perfectly clean, though the appliances are covered in dust. The living room is unfurnished, the carpet unmarked.

" Cloud?" I call, moving through the rooms, feeling nosy and, for some reason, a little freaked out. Something inside the apartment smells wrong – metallic and dank.

When I finally reach the bedroom I find the bed made, the legacy of Cloud's time spent in SOLDIER apparent in the neatly tucked in corners. At the end of the bed there is a tattered envelope. Curious, I pick it up, and the contents spill out at my feet. Feeling bad for snooping, I stoop to quickly collect them, and when I do I find that they are a motley collection of pictures and letters. I stuff them back into the envelope, trying not to look – one of them, I can't help but notice, is a thin strip from a picture booth: four tiny squares containing the smiling face of Cloud and the girl we used to chase through the Sector Five slums: Aeris, the "Savior." His savior, at least. I don't even recognize the happy Cloud of the pictures – I can tell who he is only by his dirty purple t-shirt and blond hair. Otherwise it looks like the picture was taken in another dimension.

I hear a dripping sound from the bathroom that is attached to the bedroom, and look up. The door is half-closed, and I can't see inside. For some reason a shudder runs through me. The drip had sounded like it had fallen into water, not against the tile of an empty sink.

" Cloud?" I call. No answer. I stuff the last of the pictures into the envelope, and freeze when I see a grainy, older picture of Cloud standing with a very tall, older man. The man is Sephiroth.

I can't stop myself from pulling the picture back out and examining it more closely. I'm surprised that Cloud knew Sephiroth well enough to have a picture taken with him – I knew that the infamous general cum madman was famous for not liking to have his image reproduced. But in the picture Cloud is wearing the uniform of the lowest ranking SOLDIER. Still, standing beside the impressive Sephiroth, who is clothed in his trademark black cape, Cloud looks proud. Neither of them is smiling – it's a serious portrait, but meant to capture what? They are standing alone in a field; there are mountains behind them. Sephiroth is close to Cloud – their arms are nearly touching. Something about the picture suggests an odd intimacy, and I feel uncomfortable having seen it. I shove it back into the envelope and replace the pictures on the bed.

" Cloud?" I call once more, headed now for the bathroom. He better not be naked and passed out in here, I think to myself as I push the door open.

At first I'm blinded by the bright noon light through the bathroom window. Then my eyes adjust, revealing a figure reclined in the bathtub, and what I see makes me drop to my knees.

Rufus.

It's Rufus, lying in the bathtub, his head tipped back listlessly, his eyes shut against the sun from the window, which spills onto his cold and angelic face. And the tub is not filled with water: it's filled with a pinkish, cloudy liquid. Blood.

" Rufus," I say, stumbling toward the tub to pull him out, my hands shaking, tears clouding my vision. How could – how could . . .?

But when I reach him I realize it's Cloud. My heart shudders and it takes me a moment to work up the courage to reach down and touch him. I stick my arm into the bloody water to find his arm – when I pull it out more blood seeps from the cuts he's dug into his own wrist. I have to drop his arm, my stomach lurching. I don't have the heart to try and find a pulse – I just reach in and pull him out, holding him in my arms as I run for the hall.

I have no idea what I'll do with him once I get there, though. I can't carry him down fifteen flights of stairs, and even if I did get him out of the building, what then? I need to radio a doctor, I realize, trying to think rationally. But my heart is pumping so violently I'm afraid I'll pass out – I still have the image of Rufus locked into my skull – Rufus bathing in his own blood, still waiting for me to save him.

I shake it off and put Cloud gently down onto to the bed. His head falls beside the envelope full of pictures, and I have no doubt about why he's done this. I can't think about that now, though – even if Cloud wants to die, I have to try and save him.

It's more than either us has been able to do for the people we loved and lost. And anyway, I've walked the dark paths that led him here. I would want someone – secretly, maybe even to myself – to try and save me if they found me this way.

I wrap his wrists with pieces of fabric that I cut from his sheets with my pocket knife. When the wounds are tightly sealed I check his neck for a pulse – I have a hard time finding one at first, but then there is something – at least I think there is. I fly around the apartment until I find his emergency radio – we all have one in our rooms. I get on the only working channel – the one the Midgar Disaster Relief project has been using – and pray that someone will hear me.

" Hello, hello?" I bark, not knowing what the proper protocol is. " Hello – this is Reno at the dormitory – I'm on the fifteenth floor – I need help –"

" Reno?" I recognize the voice who answers, mercifully, as Elena's.

" Elena, bring one of the doctors to floor fifteen of the dorms, NOW," I say, looking back to Cloud, who lies on the bed like a flounder, his skin as pale as the white sheets.

" Reno? What –"

" NOW, ELENA, NOW!" I scream, about to collapse into tears. It's all coming back – the way I had fought the guards who held back the crowds in Midgar as Diamond Weapon approached the Shinra headquarters, the way I had begged and cried and tried to get to him. The way I had been too late, helpless.

" Okay!" she says. " Okay, Reno. We're coming." And her radio clicks off. There are doctors on site with the relief teams, just in case injured survivors are found while we're sifting through the debris. I wonder how long it will take them to get here from there, and I realize I'm shaking. I start to sink to the floor, but then I wonder if there's anything I can do for Cloud – to call him back.

" Cloud," I say, leaning over him on the bed. He's pale but his face looks peaceful, as if he's sleeping. I touch his face, patting his cheek and trying to get him to wake up. I wonder how long he's been bleeding – I check again for a pulse, and again I'm not sure if I feel one or not.

" Listen, buddy, stay," I say, my voice breaking. Because I can hardly think of a reason myself. " You never know," I tell us both.

I lie next to him on the bed, panic wracking my body. I think of the hundreds of times I laid like this next to Rufus – Cloud's blond hair on the bed next to mine is almost exactly like his. I can't believe I thought he was Rufus when I first walked in and found him – what the hell is wrong with me?

" Ruf, help me," I whisper, reaching across the bed to again try and find a pulse. I withdraw my hand when I hear the sound of sirens on the street outside.

Leaving Cloud on the bed, I get up and go to the front door, throw it open and run to the stairwell. At the top I wait, nearly hyperventilating with relief as I hear the scrape of footsteps on the first floor.

" Up here!" I shout down through the stairwell. " Hurry!"

" What's the emergency?" a man's voice calls up to me.

" Bleeding!" I shriek, wishing for the return of mako energy so they could ride up an elevator in a quarter of the time it will take them to climb the stairs. " From the wrists," I add, hoping that this will make them fly faster up to save him. I think of his life draining away, and again the memories of the day Rufus died shake me to my core.

When the medics finally get to the fifteenth floor I lead them into Cloud's apartment, and back into the bedroom. I stand against the wall, watching them talking on their radios, checking his pulse, tapping his face.

" What's his name?" one of them asks me.

" Cloud Strife," I mutter weakly.

" Cloud," the female medic snaps, pulling open his eyelids and shining a light into his eyes. " Cloud, can you hear me?"

" Did you wrap the wounds?" the male medic asks me. I nod.

" Good," he says. " Good thinking. We've called for a chopper. We're going to take him to a hospital in Kalm." He pauses, and then looks me up and down. " You coming?" he asks.

" Yes," I say after a moment of hesitation. " I'll come. Um, is he going to . . .?" I trail off, unable to say it.

" He hasn't lost that much blood," the doctor tells me, " From the looks of him. He still has a heartbeat, and he's breathing, though both are weak. It looks like you found him just in time," he adds.

Something broken in me raises its weary head, a little bit hopeful, a little bit delivered. I couldn't save Rufus. But maybe I have already saved this other blond man, this other lonely and tortured soul. Maybe that was why I saw Rufus in his place when I first laid eyes on him in peril: because he's my second chance.

I look at him on the bed, still seemingly lifeless, and I pray for his survival, because it may mean my redemption.

And because, well. Though he is crazy Cloud, I do want him to be okay.

In the hospital at Kalm, I'm the only one standing in the darkened hall of the emergency room. Down the hall and around a brighter corner there is a waiting room, but it is crowded with people – refugees from Midgar who are still trying to get treatment for mako poisoning months after Meteor burned up above the city. And I don't feel like being around a bunch of sniffling, depressed people right now.

So I'm in the hall outside the room where they're treating Cloud. Apparently his injuries weren't as serious as they looked. He was an amateur slicer – he had cut across his wrists, a cliched and mostly ineffective method. This is what the doctor told me, and he also told me that they've seen a great increase in suicide attempts since Meteor came and went.

This surprises me a little bit, though I guess it shouldn't. Over half of the citizens of Midgar lost their homes, and those whose homes didn't perish under Meteor's crush can't exactly remain in the now unfunctional city. It's funny how so many of us blamed Midgar for our problems, cursed the lots that had placed our fortunes there, but miss it now that it's gone.

" You may go in now," the doctor says suddenly, breaking my chain of thought. I look up with surprise and narrow my eyes.

" Huh?" I ask. Go in? I was only waiting for the doctor to alert Tifa or whatever other friends Cloud still has.

" He's been awake for a few minutes now, and his pain medication is making him kind of loopy," the doctor explains, missing the bewildered expression on my face while he looks down at a chart he's holding. " But I think it would be good if you went in and spoke to him, reassured him and such."

I stare at the doctor in silence for a moment. Me, reassure Cloud Strife? I've only even spoken to him a few times – usually he was blabbering about Aeris and the way she had rescued the planet - and I know very little about him beyond what he has lost.

" Speak to him?" I ask, looking at the closed door to Cloud's room. There is a window in the door and through it I can see his feet, covered with a blanket.

" Yes – you're his friend, aren't you?" the doctor asks, raising an eyebrow.

I think about what will happen if I say no. I could have the doctor call Tifa, she could come rushing in here, weeping, probably accusing me of trying to murder her beloved or some crap. I wonder if Cloud even has the strength to handle that. Around Tifa he's always seemed a bit exhausted and overwhelmed.

" Yeah, I'll – go talk to him," I say haltingly, wondering if I'll be able to get in touch with Elena. It seems like she'd be much better than me at this.

" I'll be back to check on him in half an hour," the doctor says with a pleasant smile, walking off down the hall. I watch him go, feeling overwhelmed myself. Sighing, not knowing what I'll say, I open the door to Cloud's room and go inside.

I find Cloud lying in bed and staring out the window, past the open curtains and out at the sky. Outside the sun has already started to sink a little bit, orange-yellow light coming in and falling in a neat square across Cloud's middle, which is covered with a blanket. He's got the blanket pulled up to his chest, and his hands are folded atop it. I can't help but notice large, tan bandages wrapped around both his wrists. I look up at him to see he's staring at me with placid indifference.

" Hi," he says, his tone surprisingly even and lucid.

" Hey, Cloud," I say, forcing a laugh, trying to keep the mood light. What do you say to someone who just tried to kill themselves? Especially if you're the one who thwarted their plans?

" How are you feeling?" I ask, pulling a chair over to the side of his bed and taking a seat. He watches me with a little smile on his face, and I see that his eyes look a bit glazed over, and remember the doctor telling me he might be a little loopy.

" I'm okay," he tells me.

" Want me to call Tifa and tell her you're here?" I ask, ready to pass the responsibility of bedside guard over to someone else.

" No," Cloud says easily, almost cheerfully.

" Why not?" I ask, after a pause.

" I don't want her to know what happened," he tells me.

" Alright," I say slowly, deciding not to press any further right now. Cloud looks at me as if he's seeing right through my skull, as if he doesn't really know I'm here.

" Do you remember what happened?" I ask him cautiously, wondering if I should.

" Yes," he says. " I cut my wrists. It stung. I sort of regretted it after I did it, only because she wouldn't have wanted me to. But it was too late, and I figured she would forgive me. She did, for most things. And then I blacked out. And now I'm here."

" You don't think you're in the Lifestream, do you?" I ask, making a face. Cloud laughs a little.

" No," he says. " I don't."

" Well, I found you," I say, clearing my throat, feeling awkward. " You do know who I am, don't you?" I add.

" Yes," Cloud answers. " You're Reno from the Turks. I met you the first day I met her. The same hour, even," he says, wistfully, smiling to himself and shutting his eyes, as if me chasing he and Aeris out of the Sector Five church is a happy memory. Of course, now that he's gone, I would happily relive some of my most harrowing moments with Rufus. So maybe I know how he feels, even in his loopy, all-forgiving state.

" Yeah, that was me," I mutter.

" But what were you doing in my room?" he asks, not accusatory, merely curious.

" Tifa sent me to look for you," I explain. " When you didn't show up for work."

" Oh," he says simply, looking down at his bandaged hands.

" What's the deal with you two, anyway?" I ask after a pause, not knowing what else to talk about. And I have been curious. Tifa seems to be in love with Cloud, but doesn't seem to expect anything from him. She trails behind him everywhere he goes like a babysitter, and Cloud hardly seems to notice. As for him, I always assumed he kind of thought Aeris might come back to him if he campaigned hard enough. Maybe I was wrong – clearly he was actively trying to reconnect with her in another way entirely.

" Tifa?" Cloud says thoughtfully, looking at the ceiling. " Well, we were childhood friends. I was in love with her as a boy – or I thought I was. Later she sort of ruined my life."

I can't help but burst out laughing at this, despite the circumstances. Cloud gives me a childish grin.

" Hey, we've got something in common, then!" I say. " She ruined my life, too, when she dragged me out to this stupid reconstruction project."

" She feels bad about Midgar," Cloud tells me with a sigh. " Because all of this was kind of her fault. But she really shouldn't blame herself. It's hard, though. Not to blame yourself."

I'm not sure if I want to tell him that I know exactly what he means about blame, or ask him what the hell he means by saying that Tifa was at fault for Midgar's destruction. I don't get a chance to do either, though, because Elena comes flying in the door at that moment.

" Cloud!" she sobs, walking past me and throwing her arms around his shoulders. He reaches up to pat her back as she hugs him, crying into the nape of his neck.

" It's okay, Elena," Cloud says when she straightens up, wiping at her eyes.

" I didn't realize you two were so close," I say, frowning as Elena rounds the bed to hug me in turn.

" We're not, really," Elena says, sniffling. " It's just so sad."

Elena has been an emotional wreck since Tseng's death, which happened almost six months ago. I feel bad about not really having been there for her when it happened, because she's sure as hell been there for me since I lost Rufus, even while she's still working through her own stuff. I'm trying to make it up to her now.

There was a time when Elena actually thought Cloud had murdered Tseng, but eventually she accepted that it was Sephiroth who did it. Now she pulls up a chair beside mine and takes Cloud's clammy hand in hers, and I can only guess that the change came when she learned he had lost someone, too. We're a strange little crew here, joined by our tragedies.

" Cloud, what happened?" Elena asks, squeezing his hand.

" I tried to kill myself," he says frankly but kindly, without apology. Elena gasps.

" Why?" she asks, tears rising in her throat again. I roll my eyes. What a question.

" Because . . .," Cloud trails off, and I see his eyes starting to droop. I look up at the drip of whatever medicine they're giving him for the pain, attached to his right bicep with an IV machine.

" Because there is nothing left," Cloud finishes weakly as his eyes fall shut. Elena looks at me, alarmed.

" Is he okay?" she asks. " Should we call the doctor?"

" He's fine," I say, flicking my head toward his heart monitor, which is beeping regularly. " They gave him something for the pain. He's just falling asleep."

" Reno," Elena whispers tearfully, reaching for me. I put my arms around her and feel her sigh against my shoulder.

" This is so strange," I tell her in a whisper. " I barely know him."

" Thank God you found him when you did," Elena says, sitting back. " I can't believe Tifa's not here yet," she adds.

" Actually, I don't think Tifa knows about this," I tell her sheepishly. Her eyes widen and she raises her eyebrows.

" What do you mean?" she asks. " Didn't you radio her?"

" No," I tell her. " I was too freaked out to think of it before, and when I asked Cloud just now he told me he doesn't want her to know."

" Why not?" Elena asks, making a face.

" I don't know," I say, " I didn't want to make him explain himself, in the state he's in."

" Actually, he seems rather peaceful," Elena says, with a sigh. " But I suppose that's just the pain medicine's effect."

" Probably," I say with a groan. " I'd hate to see how he'll be feeling tomorrow morning. That's going to be one hell of a hangover."

" That's why we need to tell Tifa what happened," Elena says. " So she can take care of him."

I start to agree with her, then I remember what Cloud told me, about Tifa ruining his life. I'm sure he's exaggerating, but he hadn't hesitated to tell me that he didn't want me letting her know what had happened. And I've seen the look he has about him when she's following him around like a doting mother – maybe he would look this way anyway, but it's defeated and pathetic. I can only imagine her tripling her efforts if she found out he attempted to kill himself.

" Listen," I say, chewing my lip. " Let's wait until tomorrow morning, when he's a little more sober, and ask him if he wants Tifa to take over then."

" Take over?" Elena says, giving me a look. " Are you saying you're going to stay with him until then?"

" No need to, really," I say, swallowing a lump in my throat. " I mean, he's just going to sleep away the night, right?"

" What if he wakes up and he's frightened?" Elena asks. " What if he doesn't know where he is, and he's alone?"

" For God's sake, Elena, he's not a child," I mutter, though I know she has a point. I groan.

" I guess we could stay," I relent.

" Oh, _we_, huh?" Elena says with a smirk.

" You're the one who's so concerned about him freaking out in the middle of the night!" I insist, getting annoyed. " If you're going to stay, I might as well keep you company."

" I see," Elena says smartly, probably thinking I don't want to admit that I actually care about this wacko's welfare. That may be partly true, but mostly I just don't want to go back to the apartment alone after what I've been through today – I still feel shaken up by finding Cloud half-dead, and by imagining that I saw Rufus in his place.

The doctor comes back to check on Cloud and pronounces everything normal a few minutes later. After scribbling on his chart for a moment, he finally looks up at Elena and I as if just noticing we're there.

" You two are his family?" he asks. Elena instantly bursts into tears.

" Um, no," I say, eyeing her warily. " We're his – friends."

" I see," the doctor says. " I recommend that you help him to seek counseling for suicide survivors. Normally this isn't a difficult process, but after everything that's happened our therapy staff is very heavily booked. Until he can get professional help you two will have to support him. That is – if he has no immediate family to do so."

Elena chokes out a sob at this.

" We'll help him," I promise, though I have no idea how, and don't actually mean to do it. Surely in the morning Cloud will want Tifa by his side, especially when he sees that the only other option is me and Elena. I would feel guilty about calling her here now after he's asked me not to, but tomorrow he'll regain his senses and he'll want her to be the one to help him through this . . . whatever.

When the doctor leaves, Elena finds a box of tissues and blows her nose, and I turn on the TV.

" The television won't work," Elena reminds, me sniffling. " Shinra ran the broadcasting companies, remember?"

Static blares back at me when the TV pops on, confirming this statement. I curse under my breath and turn the TV off.

" Where are they getting power from, here, anyway?" I ask.

" Still using mako," Elena says, sitting back down again. " The Restoration Committee is allowing it for the hospitals only, so the victims from Midgar can be treated. They're working on alternate energy solutions in the meantime."

" Who is this mysterious Restoration Committee, anyway?" I grumble, sitting down beside her.

" Reeve's on it," she tells me, and I groan. Reeve was always a do-gooder prick, and though he mostly stayed out of the Turks' business, he got on my nerves. I still don't like him – something about him is too cheerful, too optimistic. It doesn't fit with everything the rest of us have been through.

" Tifa, too," Elena adds, " And Barrett Wallace."

" Please tell me Scarlet's not on it," I mumble. Elena laughs.

" Like they'd let a Shirna have any kind of power!" she says. " Scarlet's got a pretty rough deal since the fall of the company. A lot of people resent her, because of who she was, and because of her family name."

" Hmm," I say, folding my arms over my chest. Though I don't doubt that Scarlet deserves her bad reputation, I feel a little guilty for not having made any effort to protect Rufus's sister since his death. He never got along with her, but I'm pretty sure that he didn't want her to come to harm, and especially didn't want her to be castigated for being a Shinra, if he even could have imagined such a thing.

Elena and I stare at Cloud while we talk, not really seeing him, but also with an unconscious desire to keep a watch on him, though as heavily drugged as he is he won't be going anywhere soon. He sleeps in a peaceful delirium, his breathing regular and heavy, his head tilted to the side on his pillow. His blond hair, wilted and limp from the ordeal, fans out around his head. With his boyish features, pallid glow and bandaged wrists he looks a bit like a fallen angel.

" You know that legend about the fallen angel who founded Midgar, right?" I ask Elena, smirking in sad nostalgia at the thought of the tale I grew up with.

" No," she says. " I'm from Gongaga – I don't know a lot about the Midgar folklore."

" Well, there was plenty of it," I say proudly, having been a connoisseur of it in my youth. " But the most commonly known one is the story about Midgar having been born as a black hole. People say an angel fell from the sky and landed in the spot where Midgar was developed, leaving a scorched, black circle that the developers used as a boundary for the city. It was like they had to build a city there, because nothing natural would grow on that earth after the bad angel left his mark."

" Bad angel?" Elena says, laughing. " And I thought Gongaga's folk stories were hokey."

" Well," I say, a little offended, straightening. " It's just a legend. But it's true that nothing will grow anywhere inside the city limits of Midgar. Except –"

I pause, remembering. Aeris, the girl Cloud had loved, had kept flowers in an old church in the Sector Five slums. How had I forgotten that until now? A shudder moves through me, and I think about what Cloud has been saying about her, that she had powers comparable to Sephiroth's, and that she chose to use them to save us rather than destroy us, as he had . . .

" Except what?" Elena asks, looking at me.

" Nothing," I say, shaking my head. I hear the door opening behind us, and turn, expecting to see the doctor.

Instead, Rude is pushing into the room, a weary smile on his face and a duffel bag on his shoulder.

" Hey," he says, walking in and punching my shoulder. " Elena said you'd be here." He glances at Cloud and says nothing.

" Aww, did you bring me my toothbrush and PJ's?" I tease, looking at the bag.

" Nope," Rude says, unzipping it. " But I thought you could use one of these." He pulls out a can of the beer we had been drinking earlier, and I laugh.

" I can't think of anything I've ever needed more," I say, taking it from him and popping it open. Rude hands one to Elena, too, and pulls a chair over beside ours, taking out a beer for himself.

" Are we even allowed to have beer in a hospital?" Elena asks, sipping hers before she gets an answer. She closes her eyes in satisfaction as she swallows, and I have to smile – Elena has become a true Turk.

" We have an excuse," Rude insists. " It's a celebration!"

" Of what?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. " Please don't tell me you just made it with Scarlet again," I say, making Elena choke on her beer with surprised laughter.

" Nah," Rude says. " We're celebrating this guy being alive!" he says, raising his beer to Cloud, who is still deep in sleep.

" Yeah, to Cloud," I say, raising my own can. Elena lifts hers, too, and we all drink.

" I brought one for him, too," Rude says, lifting the final beer out of the duffel bag, and I double over in laughter as Elena clucks her tongue at his insensitivity.

" What?" Rude asks, shrugging. " I thought he could use one."

" Oh, only you, Rude," I say, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of my eye. " Only you."

We sit back and drink our flat, lukewarm beer as the sun goes down outside. The beer tastes even better than it did this morning, after everything I've been through. I think of all the cold ones I put down with Tseng and Rude over the years, all the much-needed happy hours that followed our shifts. Of all the martinis sipped with Rufus, looking out over the dark city from the giant windows of his penthouse apartment. I think about whiskey stolen from convenience stores, about tipping it back in alleyways with the other lost boys in the slums when I was a kid.

Alcohol has colored a lot of the scenes of my life, I suppose. As I down the warm, post-apocalyptic beer my friend has brought me, I can hardly think of a time I've been more grateful for the fuzzy complacency that it brings.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

I wake up to blinding light through an open window and a knifing pain in my neck. I move in the chair I've fallen asleep in and my fumbling legs kick over empty beer cans on the floor. Scenarios race through my head as I try to figure out where I am: Turk Headquarters, debris on the floor from the 'office party' the night before? Rufus's apartment, tied to a chair? But no, my arms are free. And when I sit up I see Cloud Strife lying sweaty in a hospital bed across from me, staring at the ceiling. I remember the events of the day before in a rush, my head thumping against the realization with the beginnings of a hangover.

I stand up and shuffle, zombie-like, toward Cloud, who is looking at me now, his eyes two wounded slits in the glare from the uncovered window.

" Can you shut those?" he asks before I can speak, gesturing to the window. I turn and clumsily pull the starchy hospital curtains closed, shutting out the harsh light.

" Thanks," I hear him mutter behind me, his voice small, half-swallowed. I squeeze the cheap fabric of the curtains and shut my eyes for a moment, swallow heavily.

" I've woken up in rooms with strange men before, but nothing quite like this," I hear myself saying as I turn. My cheeks turn red - something rare - in the face of suicidal Cloud, who stares back at me blankly. Always inappropriate, Reno.

" What happened?" he asks, staring up at me with an injured sort of expression. Suddenly I can partially understand Tifa's need to follow him around like a babysitter, patting sympathetically at his dear little miseries. The guy has a pitiable look about him.

" Um, you . . .," I'm struggling with how to remind him that he tried to kill himself when the door swings open, and Elena enters, mercifully carrying two styrofoam cups of coffee.

" Oh, good, you're both awake!" she says, chipper, handing me one of the cups. I drink from it, burning my tongue, happy for the distraction.

" I didn't bring you any coffee, Cloud," she says apologetically, kneeling at his side. " But you can have mine if you want. I just wasn't sure --"

" It's okay," he says quickly. " I just – why are you here?" he asks, looking from me to Elena. When Elena glances at me as if to ask me to explain I only sip my coffee.

" Well," she says slowly, pulling a chair over to Cloud's bedside and sitting. " Reno found you yesterday."

" Oh, shit," Cloud say, squeezing his eyes shut. " Shit."

" That's right, you're not dead!" I say. " Sorry."

" Reno!" Elena says, glaring at me.

" Well, he seemed disappointed – and I mean, that would make sense --"

" No," Cloud mutters glumly, unconvincingly. " No, I'm – thank you. I'm just embarrassed." His voice drops completely away as he finishes, his head drooping, matted blond hair falling forward. Elena and I look at each other; she's desperate and on the verge of tears. I can only shrug and raise my eyebrows – I want to sink into the floor, or just run. Even shoveling death and decay out of the crevasses of Midgar's streets seems preferable to this nightmare.

" Where's Rude?" I blurt out, unable to look at Cloud, who is holding his elbows in his hands like a child who's been scolded.

" He left this morning for the worksite," Elena says in a sigh, laying a hand on Cloud's shoulder. " Don't be embarrassed," she whispers.

" Want us to call Tifa?" I ask, starting to back up, moving toward the door.

" I just want to go home," Cloud says, not looking at either of us. " But . . . ,"

" Oh, I don't know if anyone's cleaned it up," Elena says softly, looking to me. I shake my head, thinking of the bloody bathtub and faltering a bit.

" Nevermind," Elena says with a flick of her hand, " You can come home with Reno and I. We've got a fold out bed in our couch."

I look at her with completely unsubtle silent panic, my eyebrows shooting up in alarm. She ignores me and finishes her coffee in a gulp, dropping the cup into a trashcan. Before I can open my mouth to gracelessly protest, the doctor breezes into the room.

" Okay, Mr. Strife," he says, keeping his eyes on a clipboard he's carrying. "You're free to go. Just change those bandages daily, and keep the wounds clean. You'll be alright."

Cloud opens his mouth, but then shuts it. He sits forward on the bed with a dejected posture. He looks weak, and I wonder if he should be released yet, or if the doctor is just speeding things along so that the room will be clear for the next mako-poisoned patient.

" May I talk to you?" he asks me suddenly, taking a hold of my arm and leading me out into the hall. I look back to Elena as I'm helplessly whisked out of the room, and she shrugs, a little smartly, I think.

" You'll need to maintain a suicide watch," he tells me frankly when we're out in the hall together. " We don't have the resources to give him a psychological evaluation – we've been operating in emergency mode since the meteor leveled half of Midgar. You're going to have to step forward and take charge of his recovery, as his friends."

But we're not his friends, I want to scream. I find myself nodding, though, knowing I can pass this off on Tifa as soon as we get Cloud back to the dormitories. All I want to do is get the hell out of here as soon as possible, to go back to my apartment and fall into my bed. Despite Elena's brilliant suggestion that Cloud should move into our already cramped little apartment, I'm sure Tifa will insist on him setting up camp in her place. Hell, she'll probably be bouncing off the walls at the opportunity to get closer to him.

So as the doctor checks Cloud out of the hospital, as Elena and I walk him to a car waiting to take us back to the ruined city, I'm feeling pretty good about my role in all of this. I saved Cloud's life – and he said thank you, despite the fact that I basically just thwarted his own plans. He told me the night before, doped up on painkillers, that he'd regretted the slicing just after he'd done it. And I had shown up to rescue him just in time. I'm more than a little proud of myself as we ride through the green pastures that line the road that leads back to Midgar.

But when I glance up at the rearview mirror and catch sight of Cloud in the backseat, my mood dampens a bit. He's sitting with his forehead pressed against the window, wincing as the car bounces along the uneven highway. There are dark circles under his eyes, his skin is pale and sallow, and he doesn't exactly look thrilled to be alive.

Still, I tell myself, looking away: he thanked me. I did my part. Let Tifa take it from here.

Midgar comes into view like a gray threat on the horizon, and I feel a pinch at the pit of me, like I'm being taken back to jail. But maybe Tifa will give me a break, I think, for saving her little darling. Maybe she'll let me off the hook, maybe I can go back to Kalm, get back to boozing and sleeping around and reaching across twisted sheets looking for Rufus.

Oh, there it is. I feel something like a dropkick in my ribs, and it sinks through me, tearing its way downward, ripping at my defenses. And suddenly the idea of drifting off on my own doesn't sound so great. I look back at Cloud again, and think it could have been him finding me. I almost want to tell him, to find him later and – but shit, that's not me. I'm not good at explaining myself, and I haven't said two words about Rufus to anyone since he died. I don't even know where I'd begin.

So I'm silent, hands shoved into my pockets, as the car pulls up to the dormitories and Elena helps Cloud out. I follow them like a sullen teenager up the stairs to our apartment. Cloud has to take it slow, and Elena is patient with him, but I still want to run away. Instead I just walk up behind them, eager to get to a radio so that we can get in touch with Tifa and get this sad sack off our hands.

We don't have to wait for a radio call, though, because Tifa is on the lobby outside our apartment when we arrive upstairs, talking frantically with Barrett. When she sees Cloud she makes a choking kind of noise and runs to him, yanking him from Elena as if she'd kidnapped him.

" Oh, God!" she says, running her hands over the extensive bandaging on his arms. " What happened?" she demands, looking at Elena, then me.

" He, um --" Elena begins awkwardly, as Barrett crosses his arms over his chest and gives her a suspicious look.

" I had an accident," Cloud says bitterly, pulling himself out of Tifa's grip. " I'm fine, I just need to rest."

" I don't understand," Tifa says, frowning. " Where have you been all night? Reno, I told you to find him!" she shouts in my direction.

" I did, okay!" I bark at her. " I -- took him to the hospital."

" Hospital? What's wrong? Where are you going?" she asks as he makes his way toward my and Elena's apartment.

" I need to lie down," he says, opening the door. " They said I could --" he turns back and gives me a searching sort of look, his hand still on the doorknob.

" Yeah, fine," I say, feeling sorry for him. Tifa looks like she's about to have a hysterical fit and I know it's not exactly what the doctor ordered. As Elena takes Tifa aside and I almost want to tell her not to say anything about what Cloud did. Maybe she deserves to know, but he already seems so ashamed, and I know she'll spread the news around to their other moronic pals.

Feeling like I'm about to pass out from exhaustion, I follow Cloud into our apartment. He leans against the wall as I pull out the sofa bed, which has a dingy old mattress with two mysterious stains on it.

" I'd make it up for you, but I don't know where Elena keeps the extra sheets," I mutter, scratching my head. " Or if we even have any."

" I could go back to my place," he says, staggering a little as he pushes off the wall. " I'll just shut the bathroom door," he adds darkly.

" No, c'mere," I say, taking his arm before he can topple over. He looks at his feet as I lead him into my bedroom and resentfully pull back the sheets for him.

" Is this yours?" he asks, sitting on the end of the bed.

" Yeah," I say. " It's okay. You're . . . sick. I mean, recovering. So go ahead. I've got to go to work anyway."

" Were you at the hospital all night?" he asks after a pause.

" I slept," I say, brushing it off. " A little. In a chair."

" You look tired," he says, though he hasn't looked at me since we left the hospital.

" No, I'm fine, really --," I insist, though just looking at the bed is making my knees weak, I want so badly to fall into it and sleep for days.

" Just stay, alright?" he says, barely audible. " I don't want to be alone."

Speechless, I watch him take his shoes off and scoot up to the pillow, roll onto his side and tuck one hand under his chin. I can hear Elena and Tifa arguing out in the hall, and before I can think about it too much I shut my bedroom door to close out the sound.

Cloud looks up to see which side of the door I'm on, and when our eyes meet I see something like stark relief cross his face. He looks much more grateful than he did when he was thanking me for saving his life. Then I remember what the doctor said about suicide watch, and I wonder if I haven't just saved it again.

For the first time in my life I'm at a complete loss for words, so I just slide off my shoes and my belt and climb onto the other side of the bed. I'm facing away from Cloud but I can feel him back there, hear him breathing, and I wonder if I'll be able to get to sleep. I've shared beds with plenty of men, women too, but something seems different about this – he's got me feeling nervous.

Only because he's a wreck, I tell myself. Only because I don't want to be the one stuck taking care of him.

But it's a lie, something that I only let myself realize in the hazy space between sleep and consciousness. Somehow I'm actually glad it's me here with him and not Tifa, or even Elena. I could never guess why, and I don't even want to know. I only want to drift off, just like this, strangely pleased at the fact that I'm keeping someone – him – safe.

I wake up in the dark. I'm sober, and my head hurts, more sharply than it might if I was waking up after a bender. I roll over and my tragedy starts to wash over me, as it always does when I first wake up, but then someone stirs on the other side of the bed. I turn and see blond hair shining in the thin strip of moonlight from the window.

" Ruf?" I say, my voice a nervous croak. As soon as I've spoken I remember where I am – the apartment, post-apocalypse, with ailing Cloud Strife dozing in my bed.

Right.

Feeling stupid, and hoping he didn't hear me, I sit up and rub my eyes. It's hot in my room; I long for mako energy, for air conditioning. I hear pots clattering in the kitchen: Elena. Before I push off the bed I listen for the sound of Cloud breathing, because suddenly it's my responsibility to make sure he stays alive. When I hear it I let out my own breath: I'd been holding it without realizing it.

I look at him in the dark before opening the door. He's still lying on his side, still sleeping with his left hand tucked under his chin. Now I'll never get rid of you, I think, battering down part of me that perks up at the idea of having even a neutral bedmate.

When I walk out into the apartment I shut the door behind me and make my way to the kitchen, where Elena is standing at the stove. She gives me a little smile as I walk in, grimacing against the light.

" Have a good nap?" she asks, and I kiss the back of her head before going for the cabinet above the sink where she keeps an economy sized bottle of aspirin.

" It was okay I guess," I mutter, popping four pills into my mouth. I open the fridge and groan, remembering that it's not cold anymore. I pull out a warm bottle of water and wash down the pills.

" He in there with you?" Elena asks teasingly, despite the fact that she knows perfectly well where Cloud is. She adds another piece of wood to the fire she's built in the hollowed out electric stove, and tries to bite away her smartass smile.

" Yeah," I say, giving her a look. " Please, Elena. He just tried to kill himself."

" I know, it's just funny," she says, stirring a pot of boiling pasta noodles. " The way people end up in your bed."

" Hey, I was perfectly ready to commandeer yours," I tell her, annoyed. " He's the one who wanted me to . . .," I trail off, feeling like a bit of a jackass for telling her this.

" Poor thing," she says, pulling the pot off of the stove and dousing the fire. I lean against the kitchen wall and watch her fix three plates of food, my headache slowly succumbing to the drugs.

" Tifa was beside herself," she says, sighing. " She wanted to come collect him but I told her to let him rest."

I open my mouth to rant against Tifa, but then snap it shut. If she wants to come reclaim her psycho boy, let her.

" I don't blame her, really," Elena says, setting the three plates on the table. " I would have thought she'd have been the one Cloud wanted to nurse him back to health. Guess he chose you instead," she says, biting back a laugh.

" He did not!" I protest, sitting down in front of one of the bowls of pasta. " He's just – well, I don't know what his problem is. But she can help herself if she wants him. It would make a hell of a lot more sense," I mutter, taking a fork that Elena laid down and stirring the pasta – no butter, no sauce. Just pasta.

" Goddamn I need a drink," I say with a mouthful of slippery noodles.

" Yeah, that was kind of fun last night," Elena muses, sitting down across from me. " Maybe Rude will find some more beer tonight."

" Is that what he's been doing at night?" I ask. " Raiding looted stores? Shit, that's dangerous."

" I know, I tried to tell him," Elena says, shaking her head. " Apparently he's recruited Scarlet now, too."

" Great," I mumble. " She probably thinks she can corner the market on found luxury items. The Shinra Empire will rise again!"

" Oh, I doubt it," Elena mutters, pushing her pasta around on the plate. " Scarlet's become something of a pariah in our little community here."

" If you ever just want to run away," I say, shaking my head. " Leave this dump for good – just tell me. I'll come with you, and I'd bet Rude and Scarlet would be right on our heels."

" Where would we go?" Elena asks quietly. "Mako reactors are being shut down all over the world – it's not just Midgar that has to readjust to a new way of life."

" But Midgar's different," I say. " It's not just the mako. There's too many memories here. I feel like I'm choking on them, sometimes."

" Reno --"

" Anyway," I say, clearing my throat. " I guess we'll have to get back to business tomorrow morning. Tifa's probably coming to get him first thing, right?"

" I don't know," Elena says with a sigh. " She seems to want to, but Barrett wasn't too happy about it. Tifa's been a real leader for the reconstruction project, and he thinks they'd suffer without her."

" Probably true," I mutter. " If we left it to the rest of those clowns they might cause more damage than meteor did. But Tifa'll still give it all up for Cloud."

" I don't know," Elena says quietly. " Maybe."

" Should we wake him up to eat?" I ask, glancing at the third steaming plate of pasta sitting on the table.

" No, I think he should sleep," she says, with a nod to herself as reassurance. " He's been through quite an ordeal."

" Right," I mutter. We eat the rest of our meal mostly in silence, and Elena covers Cloud's portion with plastic wrap and places it on the counter. It's a stark contrast with the night before, laughing over beers with Rude, Cloud slumbering peacefully in the background, comforted by painkiller paradise. My insides are screaming for a drink, and for a few desperate minutes I consider taking Rude's route and plundering the streets of Midgar in the darkness. But I'm too damn tired. While Elena washes the plates at the sink I open the fridge, as if to check one last time to make sure there isn't a six pack or a bottle of sake waiting inside, then shut it and shuffle back toward my room.

" Want me to make up the couch bed for you?" Elena calls.

" No, it's alright," I say, my hand on the doorknob. " Don't worry about it."

Back in the darkness of my room I take off my pants and slump down into the bed in my t-shirt and boxers. Cloud is still fast asleep, or at least he appears to be. I hear something that sounds like his stomach growling.

" Cloud?" I mutter.

No answer.

Before long, I'm asleep myself. Same old dream: chasing Rufus through the streets of Midgar as the city crumbles around us. He's always just ahead of me, but unreachable, and laughing, as if it's all a delightful game to him. And it was.

But this time the dream is different. As I'm crossing the bridge near the center of the city, the one that goes over the train tracks, I see something out of the corner of my eye that makes me stop. I turn my head just for a moment to investigate, and when I look back to Rufus he's long gone.

So I walk toward the edge of the bridge, and when I look over it there's a river flowing beneath it instead of train tracks. Cloud is standing waist-deep in the water, looking forlorn.

" Hey!" I call, but my voice doesn't work. Cloud looks up at me anyway, and starts waving his arms, panicky.

" Help me!" he shouts. " I can't swim!"

" But you're standing . . .," I try to tell him, though I still can't seem to make any sound come out of my mouth.

" Help," he says weakly, bursting into tears. Suddenly the ground under my feet starts shaking, and I turn to see Diamond Weapon approaching behind me, rearing back as if preparing to strike, knocking buildings aside as it moves . . .

I wake up with a start, and jerk with surprise when I see Cloud in bed next to me, no longer sleeping but flailing about frantically, clawing at the air.

" Wait!" he screams.

" Hey, stop!" I say, catching one of his wrists. My heart is still racing from my own nightmare – I can't think of anyone who could possibly do a poorer job of comforting him. I realize that I've grabbed one of his wounds and I curse myself as he sits up and shouts in pain. I start to reach for his shoulders to steady him, but he punches me in the face before I can.

" Shit!" I exclaim, rolling off of the bed and onto the floor, landing hard on my knees. He caught me on the left temple, and my headache flares back up instantly along with the pain from the impact.

" What – what's – what's going on?" he stutters on the bed, sitting on his knees and watching me on the floor.

" You just punched me you little bastard!" I shout up at him.

" Oh," he says, deflating a little as he fully regains consciousness. He winces and reaches for his wrist, and I feel guilty for having grabbed it without thinking.

" You were dreaming or something," I mumble, standing and rubbing my temple.

" I'm sorry," he says.

" Did I hurt your arm?" I ask after a pause.

" It's okay," he tells me, running his fingers over the bandage.

" C'mon, man," I say, sitting beside him on the bed. " Lemme see. Is it bleeding?"

" No," he says, hugging his arm protectively to him. " This is weird," he says, looking up at me.

" No shit," I say, rolling my eyes. " You're the one who --"

" You want me to go?" he asks, bracing himself against the mattress as if he's ready to get up – he winces and hugs his arm again.

" No, it's okay," I say, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him from trying to leave. He probably should go – he'd be much better off in someone else's room. Anyone else's. He's shaking.

" Are you cold or something?" I ask him, letting my hand fall off of his trembling shoulder.

" I don't know," he mutters. " I think I might be hungry."

" You think?" I scoff. " Are you or aren't you?"

" Yes," he admits. " I am."

" Well, she's got a plate of pasta for you out there," I say. " C'mon."

" Can't you bring it in here?" he asks, looking up at me.

" You want to eat in my bed now?" I ask, throwing out my hands.

" I just don't want to --"

" Alright, forget it," I say, shutting my eyes in frustration. " Fine. I'll go get it." I storm out of the room, sorry for being such an asshole, but it's just what comes natural. And he did punch me.

In the kitchen I open the now useless freezer and sigh into it, longing for ice for my aching head. I think about popping another handful of aspirin, but I know we should conserve it. So instead I simply pick up Cloud's plate of pasta, dig a fork out of one of the drawers, and bring it back into my room.

He still hasn't put a light on, and when I hand him his dinner he looks less than thrilled with it.

" What is this?" he asks, poking at the lump of cold, stuck-together pasta with the fork.

" Noodles, dummy," I say, going to the other side of the bed and sitting.

" Oh, thanks," he mutters, staring down at them with disgust.

" Beggars can't be choosers," I tell him, lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling, trying to get my head to stop pounding so violently. I shut my eyes and wish for Rude to come to the door like Santa Claus, his arms full of liquor found in some magically well-stocked convenience store that had been abandoned. But there's no knock on the door, only the sound of Cloud reluctantly chewing cold noodles.

" Did Elena tell Tifa?" he asks, after eating in silence for awhile. " About what I did?"

" I think so," I say, my arm lying across my forehead. " Yeah."

" Great," he mumbles.

" She has a right to know," I tell him, annoyed. " She's your friend. What the hell, man?"

" I know," he says. " She just wants to help me."

" So what's the fucking deal?" I ask, looking over at him.

" I didn't want her to know how bad off I really am," he mutters.

" Why not?"

" Cause she was trying so hard to make me happy again," he says, putting the plate of pasta down on the floor.

" Are you trying to give me rats in here?" I ask, sitting up. He doesn't seem to hear me; he's staring off into space. I groan and get up, pick up his bowl from the floor.

" Oh, sorry --"

" Forget it," I mumble, going for the door.

" Reno," he says, stopping me before I can open it. " Why are you being so nice to me?"

" I'm not being that nice," I say, keeping my back to him.

" You know what I mean."

" I know what you're fucking going through, okay?" I say, my cheeks burning. I open the door and stalk out into the kitchen, pissed off. He's got me this loose-lipped already, and I'm not even drunk. Why the hell did I say that? I don't want to explain Rufus to him, a guy who's mourning the angel in pink who saved all of us. He wouldn't understand. Sometimes even I don't understand why I loved Rufus.

When I get back to the room I'm hoping he won't question me about what I said, and when I finding him pulling at his bandages I'm relieved for the distraction.

" Need help changing them?" I ask.

" I guess," he says. " Did they – did they send you home with anything that I can take for the pain?"

" No," I say, sorry for him. " They were pretty crazed there, I think they're rationing painkillers. You got your share the night they admitted you."

He winces as he pulls strips of bandages off, and I kneel on the floor in front of him, batting his shaking hands away.

" Let me do it," I say, peeling back the dirty gauze.

" Have you got fresh ones?" he asks.

" Yeah, in a first aid kit out there," I say, flicking my head toward the door. " I'll go get them in a minute. First we need to wash your cuts."

" How do you know about this stuff?" he asks.

" I was a Turk, stupid."

" I thought Turks only knew about getting drunk and running from fights," he returns smartly. I look up at him and narrow my eyes.

" Do you want me to help you or not?" I ask him, trying not to look at the hack job he's done on his arm after the bandage is off – red marks closed up with stitches crisscross his skin, and just seeing them out of the corner of my eye makes my stomach lurch.

" Sorry," he says, smirking a little and snapping his smartass mako eyes up to mine. My stomach jerks again, differently this time, and I curse myself for my inadvertent idiocy. Blue eyes and blond hair. That's all it is.

" Cause I can throw you out on your sorry ass whenever I want to," I insist, going for the other bandage and willing myself not to look up and get another eyeful. " Gladly, even."

" But you wouldn't," he says, surprising me with his nerve.

" Oh, really?" I say with a snort, pulling off the second bandage. " And why not?"

" Cause you know what I'm fucking going through," he says, echoing me. I look up at him for a second, then grab the discarded bandages, balling them up in my fists.

" What'd you mean by that anyway?" he asks as I get up and throw the bandages in the trash.

" Nothing," I say, going out of the room to get the first aid kit. Shit. Now I've fucking done it. A blue eyed, blond haired disaster in my bed, asking me about Rufus. Fucking brilliant, Reno.

When I get back to the room Cloud hasn't moved. Without speaking I grab his shoulder and pull him into the bathroom with me. I wet a washcloth, rub some soap on it, and carefully take up one of his arms, turning it so that I can see the underside, the stitched up cuts. In the bathroom light they're even more grisly, and I swallow a lump that rises in my throat before I set about cleaning them. He makes a sort of hissing noise as the soap touches the raw skin, and I pause and glance up at him.

" It's okay," he says quietly, and I continue, doing the other arm as well. When I'm done I have him hold both arms under the bathtub faucet to wash off the soap. After the cuts are rinsed I take a clean towel and pat both arms dry carefully.

" Hey, you're good at this," Cloud says as I lead him back into the bedroom to re-wrap the wounds.

" Rude's gotten himself into some pretty nasty shit in the past," I mutter. " I've had to patch him up before. Tseng, too." I get a flash of the Temple of the Ancients as I say this, of the day Elena and I found him and no amount of wound cleaning or bandaging could have helped. Swallowing heavily, I push Cloud into a sitting position on the bed, and go for the first aid box.

" Look, I know what you were talking about before," he says as I unroll fresh bandages for his arm. " About Rufus," he adds, making me freeze in place.

" What?" I ask, glaring at him.

" People knew, you know," he tells me, shrugging.

" I didn't think your crew did," I mutter, mortified, for some reason. I was the one who used to brag on screwing around with Rufus, but now that I've lost him I wish I could just forget the whole thing, and that everyone else would, too. I don't want people assuming that his death destroyed me, even if it did. Especially because it did.

" I wouldn't say most of them knew," he says, watching me wind gauze around his cuts. " Or any of them, really, besides me."

" How the hell did you know, then?" I ask, wanting to sock him for throwing this in my face, even as I'm carefully tending to his wounds.

" I could just tell," he says, quietly now. " The couple of times I saw the two of you together."

" Well, you're pretty goddamn intuitive, then," I mumble. " Cause he wasn't exactly all about public displays of affection. Or any displays of affection."

" I know," he says, and I stop closing off his bandages and give him an incredulous look. " It just reminded me of . . . my own . . . stuff."

" Stuff?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

He finishes tying off the bandages himself, saying nothing. I sit on the floor and stare up at him, waiting.

" Could you do something for me?" he asks, cutting me off before I can ask him what the hell he's talking about.

" At your service, master," I snap sarcastically, standing. I think of Rufus rolling his eyes at hundreds of similar comments. God, I think I'll miss that most of all – being a smartass and pissing him off.

" There's something up in my apartment – an envelope," Cloud says. " It should be on the bed."

" What do you want it for?" I ask, thinking of the envelope I'd seen when I was up in his apartment, the one full of pictures.

" I just like to have it with me," he says, holding my gaze.

Cursing him, I walk up the stairs to the top floor where he and his friends' apartments are. The lobby is empty and dark, but I can hear noises from behind some of the doors. I hear Yuffie's laugh, and a man's voice – Rude?

Unable to stop myself, I go to Yuffie's door and knock. The loud talking stops, and I hear whispering, and footsteps padding toward the door. When it opens Yuffie peeks out and frowns at me.

" Oh," she calls back into the apartment, " It's just old red."

" Who?" I hear Rude ask.

" Your redheaded friend," Yuffie says, giving me a sly sort of look and opening the door so I can come in. Inside Rude is sitting on a pillow on her living room floor, Scarlet asleep with her head in his lap. Cid is sitting at the window smoking a cigarette, and his girlfriend – Shera, I think her name is – is lying on the floor across from Rude, sitting up on her elbow and giggling.

Yuffie's apartment doesn't look at all like any of the others I've seen – she's painted the walls a rich red color, gauzy silk curtains hang around the window, and paper lanterns, lit with candles, hang from the ceiling. It reminds me a bit of Don Corneo's bedroom, which I had the displeasure of visiting once when Rufus sent Tseng and I to pressure him about some political bullshit.

" What the hell is this?" I ask as Rude stands and greets me with a clap on the shoulder. The look on his face is distinctive – he's been drinking. His breath smells like -

" Rum!" I exclaim, spotting the bottle on the floor. I dive for it and take a gulp while Yuffie cracks up at my enthusiasm.

" Help yourself, man!" Rude says, reaching down and helping a sleepy-eyed Scarlet to stand. " We hit the motherlode tonight!"

" Why didn't you tell me?" I ask, too happy about the stockpile of liquor and beer that I've spotted sitting on the floor near Cid's feet to give Rude the pummeling he deserves for keeping this from me.

" We just got back," he explains, throwing an arm around Scarlet, who yawns and regards me with the trademarked bored Shinra gaze. " I was going to go by your place, but Yuffie said you were looking after that guy who tried to off himself. How's he doing, anyway?"

" He's alright," I say, feeling guilty that I'm postponing my mission to get Cloud's photos for him. But why shouldn't I take my time? I don't owe him anything.

" Check out the goods," Yuffie says, dancing over to the pile of stuff they found and lovingly running her hands over the bottles and dusty packages. " We're going to be running this place before long!"

" Hey, congrats," I mutter. " I'm guessing you were along for the hunt."  
" Hell yeah!" Yuffie says, straightening. " I'm the best scout this side of Kalm!"

" And you, too?" I ask, looking to Cid and Shera.

" Nah, I just heard them whooping it up over here and thought I'd join in," Cid says with a smirk.

" Generous of you," I say to Rude.

" It just ain't a party without Cid," he says, grinning. " And he was getting a little unpleasant to work with since he ran out of cigarettes."

" Not to mention live with," Shera remarks with a smile, patting a carton of cigarettes that sits in Cid's lap. " I'm eternally grateful," she says, winking at Rude.

" Can I take something?" I ask, my eyes scanning the pile of goods.

" What will you give us?" Yuffie instantly demands.

" Hey, no charge," Rude says. " He's a friend." Yuffie scoffs and folds her arms over her chest, but doesn't protest.

I select a bottle of cheap sake and a package of peanut butter cups, and nod to Rude on my way out of the apartment.

" Where are you going?" he calls. " The party's just getting started!"

" I'm watching after our suicidal pal," I remind him, reaching for the door. " Remember?"

" Reno!" Yuffie says, jogging to me. " Tell Cloud . . . take care of him, okay?"

" I'm trying," I say. " For some reason."

" Yeah, tell him to hang in there," Cid calls from the window.

When I'm out in the hall I let out my breath, some inner mania in me temporarily satisfied now that I've got a bottle of alcohol in my hand. I resist the urge to just tip the whole thing back there in the lobby, and go instead toward Cloud's apartment.

To my great displeasure, the apartment is not empty. When I go into the bedroom for the envelope I hear noises from the bathroom, and look inside to find Tifa on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. The tub is already spotless.

" What are you doing here?" she asks me without looking up. " Where is he?"

" Downstairs," is all I tell her. " He wanted some things, so I came up to get them for him."

" What?" she asks, sitting up on her knees and frowning at me. " He's not moving back in here?"

" I don't know," I say, sighing. The smell of the disinfectant she's using is making me dizzy.

" What the hell is that?" she asks, nodding to the bottle of sake.

" You used to be a bartender," I say. " Seems like you'd know." She glares at me.

" Reno, if you'd rather get drunk than attempt to take some responsibility --"

" I'm not drinking any until I get your pathetic boyfriend off my hands, okay?" I shout. " If it were up to me he'd be up here in his own goddamn bed, but I don't want to ruffle his feathers, so if he wants to haunt my footsteps far be it from me to try and stop him!"

Tifa stares at me for a moment after my rant.

" It's only because you're the one who found him," she tells herself, her voice a little shaky. " He's developed some weird attachment to you because you saved his life."

" Maybe," I say, starting to turn. " Or maybe he just wants to be around someone who doesn't expect anything of him for awhile."

" What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she asks, standing.

" I don't even fucking know," I say, shaking my head. " I gotta go. He's waiting for me," I add, just to stab at her. I'm not sure why I'm being so vindictive, and I actually feel bad for her, left here cleaning up his mess without so much as an acknowledgement. But I still walk away without apologizing.

Back downstairs, I let myself into the apartment and lock the door behind me. As I pass Elena's door I pause, listening. Sometimes she cries herself to sleep at night. It's Tseng; she's just as haunted as Cloud and I, but she has her breakdowns in private. A couple of times I've barged in, when I've heard her in there, trying to stay quiet but losing control. Maybe she'd rather cry alone, but I can't stand the thought of it, and she's never turned me down when I've offered to sit up with her until she falls asleep.

I go into my room with the sake, candy and envelope full of photos. I toss the envelope to Cloud, who's sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard.

" Took you awhile," he says, opening it carefully and checking the contents.

" Ran into some people up there," I mutter vaguely, deciding not to tell him about Tifa. " Got you a present, too."

" What'd I do to deserve a present?" he asks, actually smiling a little when I sit on the bed next to him.

" Oh, shut up," I say, setting the sake on the bedside table and opening the package of peanut butter cups. I hand him one and pull the paper off of the other, popping it in my mouth.

" Motherfuck," I say, with a mouth full of delicious chocolate and cheap peanut butter, the candy melting against my tongue. " That's good."

" Yeah," Cloud says, smiling as he slowly nibbles the piece I handed him. " That's pretty amazing after a dinner of cold pasta. And I can't remember the last time I had chocolate. Wait, yes I can. At Gold Saucer. Aeris bought chocolate covered peanuts." He smiles to himself sadly, remembering.

" Well, don't thank me or anything," I say. " I could have eaten them both myself, you know."

" Where'd you get them?" he asks, still not thanking me. Cute.

" My secret stash," I tell him, putting my hands behind my head.

" I see you've got a bottle of sake over there," he says, eying it.

" That's mine," I say, though actually I was toying the idea of draining it with him. It's no fun to drink alone, and my usual drinking partner is slinking around upstairs with a Shinra and an obnoxious teenage ninja – not my idea of a good time. But maybe I'll save it for a special occasion. I can't even imagine anything remotely special happening in the days ahead, but I'll hang onto it for a few days, at least. Just knowing it's there is comforting, something I'd like to hold onto for as long as I can resist actually drinking it.

" I wanted to show you something," Cloud says when he finally finishes painstakingly eating his candy. He wipes his hands on his pants and opens the envelope, fishing through it until he comes out with a small, worn snapshot.

It's the picture of he and Sephiroth. I remember it from before, and suddenly I feel uncomfortable, though I couldn't say why. He hands it to me, and I handle it gingerly, looking at it in the moonlight from the window.

" See?" he says, leaning his head back and looking at the picture over my shoulder.

" What am I looking for here?" I ask, staring at it. All I see is the obvious: he and Sephiroth, standing together in a field, unsmiling. Sephiroth is an impressive figure next to Cloud, who looks boyish and diminutive in comparison.

" I was only sixteen," he muses, as if he's gotten lost in the picture himself. I look at him, and he keeps his eyes on it.

" So what, you were friends?" I ask.

" Don't you see it?" he asks sadly. " Whenever I saw you with Rufus it made me think of the way I was with him. Around him. I mean, we never even – well. But I was – I would have brought the world down with him if he'd have let me. When I was a teenager, anyway. But that wasn't what he wanted, back then."

" What are you talking about, you crazy fuck?" I ask, sitting forward and laughing a little. Cloud snatches the picture back protectively, and gives me a furious, injured look.

" You're telling me you were like – what? In love with Sephiroth?" I laugh a little, and try to stop myself from completely cracking up, taking the poor kid's mental state into consideration.

" I don't know that it was love exactly," he says, looking at the picture. " But I was obsessed with him. He was so powerful. And he was willing to give me the time of day. No one who mattered ever had before."

" And you're comparing your little warrior crush to me and Rufus?" I ask, confused and a little insulted.

" Not exactly," he says wistfully, still looking at the picture. " But the way you looked at him, like you were a little bit afraid of him, like you felt lucky as hell just to be allowed to stand next to him. Reminded me of how I was with Sephiroth."

" I don't get it," I say, squinting and shaking my head, feeling even more put out by this whole bizarre situation than before. " I thought you were in love with Aeris?"

" I was," he says, his eyes jerking up defensively.

" But she was a chick," I say. " And Sephiroth was a dude."

" Wow, that's deep," Cloud says, giving me a look. " It didn't make sense to me, either. All I know is what I felt."

" So is this you, like, reaching out to me because you used to get fucked by a real blowhard, too?" I ask, attempting to laugh at him but too freaked out to manage it.

" I don't know what it is," he says, tucking the picture carefully back into the envelope. " I've never wanted to tell anyone before. I just wanted to tell you. I'm not sure why."

Again, the little fucker has stunned me into silence. I eye the sake bottle, but decide I don't want to spoil its sweet relief by using it to wash away such a strange moment. Instead I scoot back to the headboard again, and sit there, staring into the darkness, my brow furrowed. I'm not sure why I'm so bothered by this news. Cloud lies down on his side and rolls over, facing away from me.

" Why wouldn't he let you?" I ask.

" Huh?"

" You said you'd have followed him right to the unholy grave if he'd let have let you. Why wouldn't he let you?"

Cloud is silent for a few minutes, and I start to lie down myself, figuring I've struck a nerve and that he won't answer.

" He thought I was in love with Tifa," he finally says, tightly. " It basically started the whole thing."

" The whole thing being the end of the world as we knew it?" I ask, reeling.

" Pretty much," he says.

I lie down next to him, my hands on my stomach. What in the motherfucking hell. I'll never get to sleep, I think, turning to look at the back of his head.

Either Cloud is more delusional than any of us realized, or I'm looking at the blue eyed, blond haired reason all our lives came crashing down around us. Could it possibly be true – that someone powerful got his heart broken by a doe eyed teenager and decided to take the rest of us down with him? I hope not, but I think of Rufus as I roll over, and I have to wonder. They're vengeful, self-important creatures, the powerful. Would Rufus have called for the planet's destruction if I broke his poor little rich boy heart?

I laugh to myself at the idea. As if it was ever a possibility. Rufus had me by the balls from day one, and I would have followed him to the fiery end times if I could have. But hell, he wouldn't let me, either. He didn't want me with him that day when Shinra Tower fell. Fucking control freak. He either saved my life or damned me to hell, depending on how you choose to view the smoldering shell of Midgar that he's left me to.

But for the first time in awhile, as I drift off to sleep, I'm looking forward to the morning. I'm not sure why, but I have a suspicion that it has something to do with Cloud. He certainly has proven entertaining so far. A frustrating little bastard, but entertaining, and something else, too. Something I don't even want to attempt to put my finger on while he's lying within arms reach on the other side of the bed.

Jesus, Reno. That's all you need.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

In the morning I wake to the sound of timid knocking on my bedroom door. I roll over and rub the sleep out of my eyes. Cloud is still asleep on the other side of the bed, lying on his stomach with his bandaged arms tucked under his chest. I stare at him for a moment, orienting myself. His faded purple t-shirt is twisted, and I have the strange inclination to reach over and straighten it.

Laughing darkly at myself, I slide off of the bed before I can do such a thing, going for the door. When I open it Elena is standing there, dressed in her work clothes, her short blond hair pulled up into a ponytail. She smiles at me and tries to peek around my shoulder.

" Is he still in there?" she whispers.

" Yeah, he's asleep," I tell her, stretching my arms over my head.

" Reno," she says, smiling a little, giving me a mischievous look.

" What?" I ask, annoyed.

" I don't know," she says, laughing. " It's funny, this. Weird."

" You don't know the half of it," I tell her, rolling my eyes and thinking of Cloud babbling about his teenage love for Sephiroth the night before.

" Well, anyway," she says, " I'm off to work. We're doing Sector Seven today. Can you believe they never had the decency to clean it up after the plate fell? We knew they wouldn't rebuild, but they just left it as it was."

" What do you mean, _they_?" I say, looking at my feet. " Rufus."

" His father –"

" Same difference," I say, shooting my eyes up to hers. She blanches a bit.

" That's not true," she says, frowning. " Don't say that."

" I know – I," I shake my head, feeling guilty. " But you have to admit, he didn't care."

" Well, that was Rufus," she says plainly. " He didn't have any delusions about himself. He was never willing to pretend that he gave a damn."

" Right," I say, sorry I brought it up. But whenever people talk about the fallen leadership, the proprietors of these evil reactors we're tearing down, _them_: they're talking about him. It's hard for me not to call them on it. It's almost like I don't want them letting him off the hook. He would have wanted some credit for his legacy, even if it will be remembered as one of the most destructive periods in history.

" So Tifa will be up to collect him around lunchtime, I guess," Elena says, searching me for a reaction. Or maybe I'm imagining things. At any rate, I only shrug.

" Good."

" Okay, then," she says, standing on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. " Are you going to be okay here by yourself until then?"

" I haven't managed to kill him so far," I tell her dryly, and she rolls her eyes.

" You get the day off work, anyway," she says. " You should be happy. They're some biscuits in the kitchen for breakfast, and you can have some of that canned tuna for lunch."

" Oh, can I?" I ask with mock excitement. She punches my shoulder and grins.

" Bye," she says, starting to walk off. " Kiss Cloud good morning for me," she adds, turning back with a wink.

" Get out of here you little fucker," I say, trying not to laugh. She giggles, and scurries out the front door.

Leaving the bedroom door open, I walk out into the apartment, yawning and going to the kitchen for the biscuits. Elena made them last weekend, and they've gotten a little stale, but flour is in short supply so we have to finish them off before she'll make any more. There's no butter, no jelly, no microwave to heat them up. Just crumbly, dry biscuits, for the fifth morning in a row. I guess I should be thankful that I'm not eating prison food like the rest of the Shinra employees Avalanche rounded up after the Tower fell, but, frankly, I'm not.

I walk back into my room munching resentfully on a biscuit, and find Cloud still lying in bed, but rolled over onto his back now, and rubbing his eyes. Without warning, I toss one of the biscuits at him. It lands on his stomach and he jumps in surprise, then looks up at me and frowns.

" What is this?" he asks, picking it up and regarding it with a curious and distasteful look. I can't help but laugh.

" A biscuit, stupid," I say with a mouth full. " Breakfast."

" I don't know if I'm hungry," he says, sniffing it. I double over laughing, and he throws it back at me – it bounces off my back and lands on the floor.

" Hey, don't waste food," I say, choking a little bit on my laughter and crawling across the floor to pick it up.

" The room service here sucks," he says, grinning at me as I sit on the floor brushing dirt off of the offending biscuit.

" Well, lucky for you, you're about to depart for the Hotel Tifa," I tell him.

" Oh," he says, his shoulders sinking a little. " If it's all you have," he says after a pause. " Then toss it back to me. I am hungry."

I throw him a biscuit and we both eat in silence for awhile, me sitting on the floor and he in the bed, getting crumbs in my sheets, surely.

" In Kalm I had bacon and eggs for breakfast," I say wistfully, swallowing the last floury lump of biscuit. " And juice."

" Kalm's getting hit hard now, though," Cloud says, " A lot of people from Midgar are moving in there. I think their resources are getting pretty stressed."

" Well, then I'll have to run off to Wutai when I blow this popsicle stand," I say coldly. " Or Rocket Town. Hell, maybe I'll go wreck havoc on Cosmo Canyon. I bet they've got their non-mako fueled food making strategies down pat."

" I'd love to go back to Cosmo Canyon," Cloud says, nodding to himself.

" I wasn't inviting you along, slick," I say.

" That's not what I meant," he says, glaring at me. " And don't you have a debt to society to repay, anyway?"

" I can leave whenever I feel like it," I say, standing and brushing crumbs off my pants.

" So go," he says.

" Maybe I will!" I shout at him, getting irritated. " But Elena – she wants this, to help. I don't want to leave her alone."

" How noble of you," he says sarcastically, leaning back against the headboard.

" Are you going to stay in my bed all day?" I ask him sharply, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

" No," he says, a little weakly now. " There's someplace I want to go, actually."

" Be my guest," I say, gesturing toward the door.

He's quiet for a moment; he stands.

" Will you come with me?" he asks. I knew that was coming, somehow.

" Where the hell are you going?" I ask, not willing to refuse just yet.

" Sector Five," he says quietly, his eyes dropping. " There's a church there."

I know the church he's talking about. Her church. The one we'd get sent to when Hojo wanted his specimen. The one where I first saw him, actually, lying in a bed of flowers, the girl in pink leaning over him, sunlight from the hole in the roof washing down onto them. Even then, irritated that she had a buddy with a big sword, I couldn't help but think they looked blessed, chosen. Before they hopped up to face me they'd been staring at each other; she was smiling down at him, he was grinning up at her, his hands on his stomach. It was something like the image that automatically pops into your head when you think of love. Boy and girl, the bed of flowers, the sun beams and dust motes floating around them. It was a pretty little scene, and I gladly walked all over it. Love hadn't been that way for me.

" What do you want to go there for?" I mutter.

" I haven't been in awhile," he says, crossing his arms over his chest, maybe a little embarrassed now. " I used to go a lot."

" You're just making it harder on yourself," I tell him.

" Fine," he says, pushing around me and out of the room.

" Hey, wait," I mutter, following him out. But he's headed for the front door. For a moment I consider letting him run off alone, back to that church, to wallow in his misery as I suppose he's wont to do. But then I think of Tifa, how she'll rail against me if she gets here this afternoon and finds him gone – and even worse, worshipping at the altar of his dead girlfriend. Sighing, I rush into the bedroom, pick up my pants and step into them as I'm jogging through the apartment.

" Wait!" I call, hearing his footsteps on the stairwell. I lock the apartment and hurry after him. What the hell I'm doing, I have no clue. But it's true that there's nothing else going on today, no where to report to, no bars to hide in. Quite sadly, Cloud being foisted upon me is the most interesting thing that's happened in awhile.

I jog all the way down the stairs, following him out of the building. By the time we get outside I'm out of breath, and he's still fifty paces ahead of me, walking with a determined stride. I follow him through the smoldering streets of Midgar, hating that he's got my interest like this. I tell myself it's just morbid curiosity. I tell myself I could give a flip about what happens to the stubborn little prick. That I'm just trying to keep Tifa off of my back, stay on her good side. And get out of here as soon as possible.

Right.

By the time we get to the church I'm practically running, though I'm feeling dehydrated and I'm panting, sweating my ass off. Up ahead of me, Cloud stops at the church door and looks back, and I flick him off.

" What's your problem?" he calls back. I walk up to him and resist the urge to punch his lights out.

" I'm supposed to be watching you," I tell him breathlessly.

" Says who?" he asks, frowning.

" Your doctor," I tell him, bracing myself against the church's doorframe. " And Tifa."

" Whatever," he mutters, going inside. The door is busted, splintered and broken apart, and we climb through it instead of opening it.

Inside, the place is a wreck. There's still a gigantic hole in the ceiling. I'm not sure if it's from debris Meteor threw its way or what. The flowers are still there, though, right under the shattered section of roof. The pews are still intact, looking forward to the lonely altar.

Cloud walks down the aisle toward the flower garden, and falls to his knees when he gets there. I don't know what to do. I'm no good at reassuring people. I only stand near the door, wondering why the hell I'm here. Why I even bothered to follow the little punk. He looks back at me, still sitting on his knees.

" This is just like the first time I saw you," he calls.

" What?"

" You came here for Aeris," he says, turning back to the flowers. " You were standing right there. You were the reason she hired me. Her bodyguard."

He laughs to himself, and before long he's crying, his head in his hands.

Great.

" God, man, c'mon," I mutter, walking toward him. I can't deal with crying. Myself, I've only done it twice. Once when my mother left. I was ten years old. Once when Tseng was dead and Elena was flipping out. I didn't cry for Rufus. I couldn't have. If I'd have started I wouldn't have been able to stop.

So I walk up to him, stand behind him, at a loss.

" Hey, stop," is all I know to say. He makes a choking sound, like he's trying to swallow his tears.

" Some fucking bodyguard," he croaks out.

" It's not your fault," I say, though I know it is. Just like Rufus was mine. We weren't strong enough. I know, I know.

" She was right there . . .," he says.

" I thought you said she died to save us," I snap. " That's what you've been telling everyone. That if she hadn't died, if she hadn't been there in the Lifestream, we'd all have been fucking blown to bits."

" I'd rather the world ended," he says, sniffling, wiping his nose on one of his bandages. " For one more day with her, I'd watch it all go down in flames."

" I'm sure she'd love to hear you say that," I say sarcastically, thinking of her. Smiley, selfless Aeris. She'd even been nice to me. In the helicopter when we had her, bringing her to Hojo. She'd sat with her hands folded in her lap as if she knew. She had faith in something, maybe herself; I almost resented her for it, that placid demeanor. Even when we handed her off to the mad scientist himself she went quietly, her eyes on the ground. Maybe she knew Cloud would come for her. I look at him now, a sniveling mess, and wonder how someone like her could have put so much faith in him.

I stand and wait for him to respond, but he only sits with his head dipped toward the flowers, wallowing in the sunbeams. I look up through the gaping hole in the roof and squint into the light, putting my hands on my hips.

" They're gonna tear this place down," I say. As soon as the words are out I regret them. I have an amazing talent for coming up with the worst possible thing to say in any given situation. Cloud doesn't even stir.

" It's a wreck," I say, as if to clarify.

" They should tear the whole city down," he mutters, sniffling. " It's not worth rebuilding."

" Sure it is," I say, feeling a little offended on behalf of my be-loath-ed hometown, though I agree with him.

" You don't want to be here, either," he reminds me, half-turning.

" Well I followed you, didn't I?" I spit out without thinking.

" That's not what I meant," he says, almost smiling. " I mean, in Midgar."

" They made me come back," I say, folding my arms over my chest. " What's your excuse?"

" No where else to go," he says, turning back to the flowers. " We went all over the place, together, when we were looking for Sephiroth. Every place in the world reminds me of her."

" You just don't want to be alone," I say, accusatory.

" How about you?" he asks with a frown, turning back. " You said it yourself. You could leave whenever you want, but your friends are here."

Not knowing how to respond to that, or not wanting to admit that he's right, I go to the edge of the flowerbed myself, and kneel down to inspect the blossoms. They're yellow and dull orange, simple petals with wispy stems.

" I saw her here once," Cloud tells me, his hands on his knees. " After she died."

" You're crazy," I remind him.

" I don't know," he says thoughtfully. " Do you think there's any way the dead can return? Like the Lifestream did – if we needed it badly enough?"

" You're giving me the fucking creeps," I tell him, standing.

" Sorry," he mutters, staying on the ground.

I cast my eyes around the deserted church, sighing.

" Who's watering the flowers, then?" he asks quietly.

" Huh?"

" The flowers," he says, looking up at me. " They're still alive. Someone's been taking care of them."  
" Damn it, will you cut it out!" I say, goosebumps rising on my arms. " She's dead, okay? They all are," I add, the words stinging. I feel guilty about shouting at him when he's obviously on the verge of a breakdown, the bandages from his suicide attempt staring back at me. But he doesn't burst into tears, only looks at the flowers, strangely calm now.

" I know she's dead," he says, his voice even. " But is she really gone?"

I think of the vision I had of Rufus when I found Cloud in the bathtub the other day – but no. It was just a trick of the light. They're gone. Aeris, Rufus, Tseng – all of them.

" Let's get out of here," I plead. A pigeon takes flight from the back rafters of the church and I start.

" This is the only memorial she has," he mutters to himself, not moving. " This is the only way I can visit her. If they tear it down . . ."

" You'll have them build a new one," I say, my eyes darting nervously around the place. " A big statue in the middle of the brand new Midgar. Or a Cathedral – hell, I don't know."

" This one's more fitting," he says softly, staring at the flowers.

" C'mon," I say, bending down toward him without thinking. I put my hands under his arms and pull him up from the floor like a rag doll. When he's standing he still feels heavy and listless, and I'm afraid that if I let him go he'll fall face-first into her flowerbed and never get up again.

" Let's go," I say, yanking him backward a little. " She wouldn't want you moping like this."

" I can't help it," he says, still not moving out of my grip. " And there's another reason I brought you here."

" You didn't bring me here," I remind him, not sure if I'm being defensive or charitable now. " I followed you. Chased you, even."

" Yeah, but I knew you would."

I don't know how to respond to that. Cloud steps out of my arms and walks forward, carefully avoiding the flower bed, around to the altar. I hesitate for a moment, wanting to follow him but not wanting to be so predictable. Still, when he gets to the altar steps and turns back to look at me expectantly, I groan for dramatic effect, then leap over the flowers, going to him.

" What the hell are you doing?" I moan as he walks back past the altar, toward a busted old cabinet that's covered in dust.

" I have a present for you," he says, kneeling down and carefully pulling open one of the rotting cabinet doors. I squint, trying to see the contents, and then squat down beside him.

" Wine?" I ask, reaching in to pull out one of the ten or so dark bottles that are sheltered inside. I look to Cloud and he nods. I run a hand over the purplish, unmarked bottle in my hand. It's slightly cool to the touch, and it sends a shiver down my spine: something like the promise of easy happiness.

" Why are you being so nice to me?" I mutter, staring down at the bottle in my hand.

" I asked you first," he says, and I look up at him, then quickly away.

" How are we going to carry them home?" I ask, changing the subject.

" We can find a crate in the back," he says, nodding to an open doorway. It reminds me of something – ah yes, my first fight with him took place in that back room. I had a couple of SOLDIER goons chase he and Aeris up through the roof.

" It was the best day of my life," he says, reading my mind. It almost seems like he's thanking me. Of course, had I not posed such a formidable threat, she wouldn't have had reason to hire a bodyguard, to make an excuse to hang onto him. It's a desire I'm beginning to begrudgingly understand.

" Let's go get some real food," I say, putting the bottle of wine back with the others and shutting the cabinet door. " We'll need some energy for the trek back, especially if we're going to be carrying all this booze."

" Where can we get real food?" he asks, perking up a little at the idea.

" Wall Market," I tell him. " There's a couple of food stands set up out there. It's even rougher than it was before, but we'll be alright."

Cloud's hand goes to his back, searchingly.

" I didn't even bring my sword," he mutters.

" Where's your fuckin' head, boy?" I ask, shoving him a little. " Fortunately I still have my wits about me," I tell him with a smile, pulling a taser out of my pocket.

" You've got a weird taste in weapons," he says, frowning at the handheld device.

" It's surprisingly effective," I say, standing and offering him a hand. He takes it and pulls himself up.

" And anyway," I say, pocketing the taser. " I've used guns before. When I first became a Turk, and before that. They always seemed like a good idea in theory. Then I had to – well. It was messier than I might have imagined. Not something I'm looking to relive anytime soon."

Embarrassed by the blather that has just left my mouth, I walk ahead of him until we're out of the church. What the hell is it about his sad sack face that makes me spill my fucking guts with no warning? Even Rufus never had that effect on me – quite the opposite, in fact.

When we get to the door of the church, when I've climbed out onto the street, Cloud stops and looks back.

" Don't get sentimental," I mutter. " We'll be back later for the wine."

From the church we head north to Wall Market, past people who have moved into the nooks and crannies of the debris that lines the dirt road. They watch us go by, looking out suspiciously from their tents: some are mothers with frightened children clutching at their filthy skirts, but most are sketchy looking men – those who couldn't be roped into helping clean up. Those Tifa and her crew haven't bothered to chase down, because it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Cloud and I walk confidently by: we've both kept bums like these in line at some point in our pasts, me as a Turk and he as a member of SOLDIER. We fought the good fight in the name of glorious Shinra, and we're prepared to throw down in defense of our own lives if need be. We must communicate this in our stride, somehow – despite Cloud's red-rimmed eyes and pathetic posture – because no one tries to bother us.

When we arrive at Wall Market I can smell greasy food cooking, and my stomach growls. The area is just as crowded as it ever was, albeit now with fewer hookers and shopkeepers. It's mostly just men, men wandering aimlessly. Some of them look like zombies, and they bump into us without noticing as we move through the crowds toward the smell of the makeshift restaurants. I look back to make sure Cloud is passing unharrassed.

" You're such a pretty boy," I tell him when we've pushed our way past the initial thongs of people, toward the narrower roads that used to lead to weapon shops and diners. " You never would have made it in the crowds I ran with when I lived here, when I was a kid."

" How you end up a Turk, anyway?" he asks, ignoring my insult, if that's even what it was.

" Got recruited out of a gang, like the rest of us," I tell him proudly.

" A gang, huh?" he says, looking around for the food stands, unimpressed.

" You had to prove yourself on the street before you could work for the big boys," I explain. " Had to get a reputation, then they'd come find you."

" Like Aeris?" Cloud says with a smile, not looking at me.

" She ended up being the biggest badass of all, right?" I say, teasing. " And, shit, she survived Midgar just like the rest of us. All the world's heroes were manufactured here," I add, thinking of Sephiroth. " One way or another."

" Heroes?" he mutters, giving me a look.

" I saved your life, didn't I?" I ask him sharply, and he laughs.

We settle on a stand run by an old couple who have two fires going: one is under a giant pot of murky-looking soup, and another is roasting some questionable looking meat. The meat seems to be the favorite among the locals, so we order two plates. I start to give the old woman gil, and she laughs.

" That's worthless," she says, giving me a sly and toothless grin.

" You could take it to Kalm or anyplace outside of Midgar," I tell her. " They're still using gil."

" Not for long," she says. " And do I look like I'm going to be traveling to Kalm anytime soon?" she adds wryly. She's got spindly legs that look like they're about to give out, a hunched back and a grimy sort of film all over, as if she's just crawled out of the ground. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd never been out of Sector Six, let alone the lower levels of Midgar.

" So what have you got to trade?" she asks, holding back the plates of food.

" We could go back for a bottle of wine," Cloud whispers in my ear.

" Not worth it," I mumble, looking at the meat. What could it be but mangy dog, really? But goddamn I'm starving. I swallow and steady myself, try not to take note of Cloud's hovering as he consults with me, blond hair tickling my temple.

" I haven't got anything on me," he says.

" Let's just get out of here," I say, suddenly feeling dizzy and claustrophobic. I push my way through the crowd that is gathered, hungry and chaotic, around the old couple's food stand. Cloud follows me back to the street.

" Do you think it's true what she said?" he asks as we're walking away. " That gil is going to be worthless everywhere soon?"

" I don't know anything about economics," I snap, irritable and hungry.

" Wait, I just thought of something," he says, stopping. " My belt."

" What about it?" I ask, looking down as he starts to unfasten it.

" We can trade it for food," he says, pulling it off.

I open my mouth to tell him that we could probably get something better for a belt, and that the greasy, dirty stink of Wall Market is making me lose my appetite anyway, but before I can I hear a familiar voice that makes my blood run cold.

" Reno, you used to be more discreet."

I don't want to turn around – I want to grab Cloud's wrist and take off running. But I still have a reputation to uphold.

" Artie," I say, turning to face him, putting on my best fearless expression.

" Got them undressing in the middle of the street now, huh?" he says, nodding to Cloud, who stands, clueless, holding his belt.

" We were trying to get something to eat from that old hag over there," I tell him, flicking my head toward the food stand. " She wouldn't take gil."

" So you thought maybe you'd get your friend here to do a strip tease for her?" Artie asks, and the three men who are standing behind him laugh dully. As usual, he's too much of a fucking chicken to walk the streets alone. Artie and I grew up together in Sector Two, and I fell in with his gang as we got older, not because I wanted to, not because I can remotely stand the asshole, but because if I didn't, I'd have been royally fucked.

" I was going to trade it," Cloud explains lamely, but Artie ignores him, staring at me.

" Thought a big Shinra name like you woulda died when that Tower fell," Artie says, not moving his eyes from mine.

" Nope," is all I say in response, staring back at him.

" We laughed our asses off when that fucker went down," Artie says, grinning wickedly. " Even my little brother woulda partied with us, if they hadn't killed him 'fore he got a chance to see it."

" Biggs?" I say, frowning. " Shinra killed Biggs?"

" I knew a Biggs," I hear Cloud say just as Artie's fist is making contact with my left eye. I'm on the ground before my surprise can even register, and Artie is on top of me, but when I look up I see Cloud catching his first and shoving him off.

" What the fuck!" I scream as Cloud helps me up. Artie backs off a little, but his friends step up to flank him.

" You gotta lotta nerve acting like you don't know how Biggs died!" Artie screams, and I'm surprised he's getting so emotional. He hated Biggs, his much smarter and more resourceful brother, and constantly tormented him for wasting his time following politics and studying engineering, plotting to bring the implacable Shinra down.

" I don't know what you're talking about!" I shout, my hand going into my pocket for my taser. I leave it there for the moment, but close my hand around it just in case.

" You and the rest of those Turk morons were there the night he died, in Sector Seven," Artie says, walking forward. " You were on the tower just before the plate fell, and he was trying to stop them. Isla told me!"

" Isla?" I mutter, disoriented, remembering Artie's girlfriend, who worked nights at the Honeybee and lived in Sector Seven.

" I saw her at Corneo's place the night my brother died, and she told me everything," Artie says, eying Cloud. " Who is this fucker, anyway?" he asks. " Another Shinra flunkie?"

" Nevermind who he is," I say sharply. " And your old friend Corneo? He's the one you should pin your brother's death on. He sold all of us out --"

" Us?" Artie says, laughing. " You were on the fucking tower shooting at _us_ that night, you sellout piece of shit! Isla told me, she told me everything!"

" What, are you surprised?" I shout. " You woulda done anything Shinra asked, too, if they were putting money in your hand!"

" Bullshit!" Artie says, stepping closer to me.

" You just didn't have what it took," I say, glaring at him. " You're just sour that it wasn't you getting a paycheck for gunning down the losers we grew up with."

He jumps on me then, as I knew he would. I pull out the taser and get him good in the stomach, and he screams and doubles over in pain, curling into a ball on the ground. The largest of the three men with him kicks me in the side, and I'm down for a moment, but Cloud clocks him in the face and he hits the ground next to Artie. I struggle to get back up, but Cloud's kicked one man in the stomach and elbowed the other in the chest before I can stand up straight.

" C'mon!" he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me through the crowd of onlookers, ravenous for an opportunity to focus on another person's problems for a moment. But they let us through, even as Artie is screaming after us:

" YOU KILLED MY BROTHER! RENO! RENO, YOU KILLED HIM!"

By the time we get out of Wall Market my side feels like it's going to split open, and I duck into a corner, pulling Cloud along with me. We're both out of breath. He sort of collapses against me, and I don't bother to shove him off, instead clutching his t-shirt with shaking hands.

" It's not true," I say, breathless, remembering Biggs, a stupid, determined kid with black hair, always sitting on his tiny bed with a book in his lap, even though Artie and the other guys gave him hell for it. He was obsessed with defeating Shinra. And I was Shinra. I was Shinra that night the plate fell, the night Sector Seven was crushed. Does Artie think I didn't pause and look down over the old neighborhood that night, does he think it was easy for me to do Rufus's bidding when it meant killing people who were like me, who _were_ me not very long ago? And there were men who tried to stop us that night. A girl, too. Rude had a gun, he killed all of them; I was proud of him, I think I complimented his aim. But none of them had been Biggs . . . right? No, I would have known.

" You're gonna tear a hole in it," Cloud mutters, making me look up. We're shoved into a shady space between an old laundry house and a huge piece of twisted metal that might have been the outside wall of my apartment in Shinra Tower, for all I know.

" What?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.

" My shirt," he says, looking down at my fists, which are still clutching the fabric of his t-shirt as if it were a lifeline. I let go of it and my hands are still twisted and tense. Cloud lets out his breath.

" He's wrong," I say weakly. As if it matters. It doesn't! I was only doing my job. I would have gladly killed Artie if he got in Shinra's way. I would have gladly killed any of those assholes from the neighborhood I grew up in. They never did me or my mother any favors when my father was beating the stuffing out of us. So if Biggs got in my way, so what? So what if I hated Shinra too, at one time, so what if I admired the way he thought he could fight them, even though I knew it was stupid and crazy and would only get him killed. So what if I was there when someone pulled the inevitable trigger?

" You were there," I say, remembering suddenly and looking up at Cloud. He won't meet my eyes, so I grab his shirt again and give him a jerk. He gives me a mean-spirited mako glare, but it quickly softens.

" You were there that night, weren't you?" I ask. " Yeah – you and Tifa, and Barrett. We took Aeris – we left you there."

It drops through me, then. All the times I sincerely endeavored to kill this fellow I've wedged myself into a temporary safe harbor with, this little pissant who's keeping me from completely losing it right now. He has gold eyelashes. Yeah, okay. Never noticed that before, when I was trying to kill him or afterward.

" Biggs was bleeding to death when I got there," he says quietly, his eyes dropping away. " I don't know who shot him. But. It was one of the Turks. I imagine."

I'm quiet for a little while. I keep thinking, _It doesn't matter_. And it doesn't. But I can't get the words past my lips, and Cloud just keeps staring at me, like he's waiting for me to come to a decision.

" He was a friend of yours?" I finally say.

" Actually, I hated him," Cloud tells me matter of factly. " And he hated me, too. But we sort of had a truce as he was dying."

" God, this is absurd," I moan, pushing my way back out onto the street. The light outside is harsh, and I'm sorry I had to leave, but if I hadn't made a move I might have stayed in there with Cloud until nightfall.

He follows me back to the church. Neither of us speaks as we go to the back room, the room where I once told two men to do their best to shoot him down from the rafters. We find two crates and go back out to the altar, load each one with five bottles and then carry them out of the church. Cloud doesn't linger at the door this time.

We walk back to the dormitories in the oppressive heat, sweating and leaving each other alone to our private thoughts. I keep telling myself I don't care, _stop_, Reno, you don't care – _why should you_? And I lose track of what I'm trying to get indifferent about.

When we get to the lobby of the dormitories we're ready to pass out from hunger and exhaustion. We're both sunburned – it looks better on him than it does on me, the red across the cheeks, a scar like a blush. Clashes with my hair. On him – okay, okay, fine. So what, he's a good looking guy. So what, I'd do him. So what?

I put down my crate next to his and fall into a seat neat the community dining area, tell myself it's not that rare for me to sort of absently want to screw around with someone. Except that it's been a long time since that someone was anyone but Rufus.

" Where the hell have you two been?" Barrett, who seems to be in charge of lunch today, asks us before setting down two cans of tuna in front of us.

" Water," is all I say, and pretty soon two warm paper cups full of water are placed down for us, too. Cloud and I both finish our rations in a gulp and ask for more.

" What's in the boxes?" Barrett asks us as we eat. I shovel tuna fish into my mouth with my fingers, and it might as well be caviar, cause it tastes like the finest fish I've ever eaten.

" None of your fucking business," I answer sweetly. Barrett mutters some curses under his breath and turns to Cloud.

" How you doin,' man, okay?" he asks, carefully. I've never seen Barrett do anything but playfully antagonize Cloud, so he must have heard about what happened. I wonder if everyone on the reconstruction team knows by now. I cast a look around the common room and see that more than a few lunch time stragglers are looking at Cloud.

" I'm fine," Cloud says, concentrating on his tuna.

" What the hell happened to you?" a female voice asks, and I look up to see Scarlet sitting down across from me.

" Huh?" I ask, snarling at her. I can't think of anyone I'd like to see less right now.

" You've got a black eye," Cloud tells me.

" Shit," I mutter, reaching up to touch my eye and wincing when the tender skin is sore against my fingers.

" Too bad there's no such thing as ice anymore," Scarlet says, sitting back and fanning herself with her hand.

" Ice ain't worth screwing the whole planet over," Barrett reminds her gruffly.

" Give it a fucking rest," Scarlet says, rolling her eyes. " I'd cut down ten trees for an ice cold martini right now."

" It's about more than trees!" Barrett rails, missing the joke. I smile at Scarlet over my tuna can. Maybe she's not that bad. At least she's honest. That's one thing the Shinra family's good at, when they want to be.

" I'd kill a dolphin for a cheeseburger," I chime in, though actually the joke stings a little when I think of Biggs. Scarlet throws her head back and laughs.

" To think of all the cheeseburgers I puked up over the years," she says wistfully. " It took an apocalypse, but I don't think I could manage to barf it back up, if I had one now."

" Old habits die hard," I say, snickering.

" Literally!" Scarlet says, and we both laugh.

" Ya'll are sick!" Barrett says, frowning and regarding the two of us with genuine concern. He looks at Cloud.

" You best not be fallin' in with this crowd," he says, raising an eyebrow at him before storming off.

" Yes, sir," Cloud mumbles into his tuna can.

" This is fucking killing me," Scarlet says when he's gone. " I can't wait until Rude and I can get the hell out of here."

" You better not be just using him as a free ride out of town," I say, narrowing my eyes at her. " Or I'll kill you."

" You're just watching out for everyone these days, aren't you?" Scarlet says smartly, glancing at Cloud.

" Get lost," I snap, thinking of the old days, the way she used to harp on me for fooling around with Rufus. She makes a mock hissing noise and stands, giggling to herself as she walks off.

" Fucking Shinras," I mutter, watching her go.

" She's the last of them," Cloud says in a sigh.

" Good," I say, though actually the thought depresses me. Rufus's father will be flipping in his now-desecrated grave: the Shinra line nearly at an end. Rufus himself would just chuckle darkly at the idea; he's probably having a real laugh about it over cocktails in hell. And I'm sure my little – whatever it is – with Cloud Strife has given him a good guffaw or two, as well.

" Well," I say with a sigh, looking to the two crates full of wine. " Ready to carry these suckers up fifteen flights of stairs?"

" I guess," he says, turning. His eyes catch something across the cafeteria, and I look up to see what he's focused on: it's Tifa, walking toward us with a determined gait. Her hair is pulled up in a tight bun, she's wearing dirty khakis and a white tank. Her skin is as burned as ours, and I know she's coming in from half a day's work in the junkyard blacktop of a city that she and her buddies are trying to save. I brace myself, but she ignores me and goes straight to Cloud, kneeling before him and arching her eyebrows as if she's speaking to a wounded five year old.

" Hi," she says simply, looking to him for readable signs.

" Hey, Tifa," he says.

" I cleaned up your apartment," she tells him. " If you want to come up and have a nap. You look – you look sunburned." She glances at me.

" We – he – it was his idea," I mutter, tired of answering to her.

" It's true," Cloud says. " We went for a walk this morning. I'm sorry if I worried you."

" No, it's alright," she says. " I just thought you'd be – resting."

" I'm pretty tired now," he says.

" Good, well, I'll just help you up to your place," she says, taking his arm. " Unless you want to come crash with me for awhile?" she asks, so hopeful that I actually feel sorry for her.

" I'll be alright at my place," he says. " I just need to help Reno carry some stuff upstairs --"

" I'm sure he'll manage it on his own," she says, giving me a look. " You need rest – you look exhausted."

Cloud looks back at me as she's leading him away, and though I can't bring myself to say anything, I feel like I'm a kid again, punched in the stomach at the playground, a bully walking away with my favorite toy.

_Wait_, I want to shout, _that's mine_!

But instead I simply watch her take him up the stairs, and I'm left sitting, sticky with sweat, beside the two crates of wine. I look down at them, and the prospect of carrying them upstairs seems impossible, and pointless, somehow. I look up and see Rude coming in for lunch, and wave to him. He sees me and grins, and makes his way across the common room to the table where I'm sitting.

" Lucky," he says, sitting down heavily. " You don't have to work today – but where's suicide boy? Aren't you supposed to be watching him?"

" Tifa just took over," I say.

" Aw, that sucks," he says. " I guess that means you have to go back to work?"

" I don't have to do anything," I say resentfully, thinking of Tifa upstairs, putting Cloud to bed. " I'm leaving," I decide out loud.

" Leaving?" Rude says. He looks over his shoulder. " I think Scarlet and I are going to take off soon, too," he says quietly. " The problem is convincing Elena to come along."

" She'll be alright by herself," I mutter, picking at the label on my empty can of tuna.

" I don't know," Rude says, frowning. " She's still pretty – fragile. And anyway, I'd like it if we all stayed together, you know? The last remnants of Shinra!"

" I'm not part of Shinra anymore!" I say angrily, standing.

" What are you talking about?" Rude asks, watching me struggle to lift one of the wine crates. " You know what I mean," he insists.

" You remember that night we defended the tower where the bomb was planted, the night the plate fell?" I ask him, hoisting the crate.

" Yeah," he says, with a shrug.

" Did you shoot down a guy with – black hair – sort of a small chin – really dark eyes?" I ask him, feeling stupid but unable to help myself.

" I don't know," Rude says, laughing. " There was a fat guy, a girl, and another guy. I have no fucking clue what he looked like. What's your problem, Reno?"

" Nothing," I mutter, turning to go. " Watch that crate for me. I'll be back down for it in a minute."

" Sure," he mutters, sounding a little offended. I feel bad for taking my belated angst out on Rude. It's not his fault. But I don't apologize, even when I come back down for the second crate.

" There's gonna be a party later at Cid's apartment," he calls as I'm heading toward the stairs.

" No thanks," I call over my shoulder, so he won't come looking for me. I'm not sure why, but I'm not in the mood for being around a lot of people tonight. I tell myself that I want to be alone, but that's not true. I'm dreading arriving up at my apartment and sitting alone until Elena gets home.

So what do I want? That mako-eyed brat following me around for another day? Camping out in my bed for another night, waking me up with his nightmares?

No, no – hell no!

But. Yes.

It doesn't matter, I think, placing the second crate of wine on top of the other when I get back up to my apartment. I'm out of breath, tired, and still hungry, despite devouring a can of tuna. I go to the pantry – all that's available is tuna or more stale biscuits. I pray that Elena will bring home something in the form of groceries after she gets off of work. Then I remember a special treat in my room: the sake bottle I procured from Rude's stash the night before.

I go into my room and stare at the bed. There's still a Cloud imprint on the left side. I walk over and sit on the side he slept on the night before, run my hand over the pillow. Reno, you fucking idiot. I stop myself before I can pick up the pillow and inhale. There are three blond hairs on it, and I leave them in place.

On the other side of the bed, the sake waits on the bedside table. I wish the bottle was freezing cold, but I'll accept it warm. I screw off the cap and take a big whiff of the familiar scent. It makes me feel high already.

Before I know what's happening, it's dusk and I'm waking up from a bad dream that I can't remember. All I can recall is a sense of dread and regret as I look up into Elena's concerned face.

" Reno?" she says, shaking me. " Are you okay?"

" Hmm? Yeah," I slur, looking around. " Where are we? Wutai?"

" Oh, you're not okay," she says with a resigned sigh, sitting down on the bed next to me. " There's a half-empty bottle of sake over there. Did you drink it? Alone? Where's Cloud?"

" Tifa got 'im," I tell her, blinking around the room, my head a fuzzy mess. " Member?"

" Oh yeah," she says. She looks out my window, at a blazing orange sunset.

" How was your day?" I ask, sitting up and laying my head on her shoulder. She pets my hair.

" Sad," she says, chewing her lip.

" How come?"

" It just seems insurmountable," she says, her chin quivering. " And we keep finding dead people."

" Find Rufus yet?" I ask darkly, and she starts crying silently, her head falling into her hands.

" Hey, hey," I say, patting her back. " I'm sorry --"

" You're drunk," she sobs.

" What else is new?" I ask with a laugh.

" I don't know," she says, sucking in her breath and then letting it out in a choppy gasp. " I just don't know what to do."  
" We should leave," I say, remembering my earlier conversation with Rude. " All of us."

" Where would we go?" she asks, wiping her cheeks.

" Anywhere," I say with a scoff, my eyes on the sunset. " I'd rather live in Mideel."

" Don't you feel some sort of responsibility to Midgar?" she asks. " We helped destroy it."

" Midgar helped destroy me," I mutter. " We're even."

" Reno, you aren't destroyed," she says, leaning against me. " You're okay. You're better off than most of us."

" I guess," I mumble, not wanting to tell her the truth. That I feel like tipping back the rest of the sake and taking a dive out of this sixteenth floor window I've got my eyes on.

" Listen," she says, standing, sucking in her breath and trying to cheer up. " I've got something special for dinner."

" Seriously?" I ask.

" Yep," she says, grinning. " Tifa gave it to me as a present for helping with Cloud."

" It better be a fucking turkey dinner with all the trimmings, then," I say. " He was a hell of a handful."

" Oh, stop, you loved it," she says, waving me off.

" I did not!" I insist, hopping up off the bed.

" I just mean you liked having the day off of work," she says, stalking out of the room. I follow her, humiliated.

" Look," she says, leading me to the kitchen and pointing to the table.

" A pizza?" I shriek, practically fainting in shock and delight. On the table there's an uncooked pizza, dough with tomatoes and cheese, sitting on a baking sheet and staring up at me like the face of God.

" That's right," Elena says, grinning. " There's a guy in Sector One who's been making them, with canned tomatoes and powdered cheese. He's quickly becoming richer than the Shinras were, as you can imagine. But Tifa managed to get her hands on a couple of them this afternoon, and she was nice enough to give one to us."

" I really underestimated that broad," I say, salivating at the sight of the thing. Before I can shove the whole thing into my mouth, raw dough and all, Elena starts a fire and slides the baking sheet onto the oven rack.

" What are these?" Elena asks while the pizza is cooking, kicking the crates of wine that sit by the table.

" Wine from Cloud," I mutter. " Another little present."

" Where did Cloud find wine?" Elena asks, boggling.

" In a church," I tell her. " It was some kind of ceremonial prop. I think he'd been living there for awhile before Tifa rounded him up."

" Tifa sure keeps him on a short leash," Elena muses, bending down to check on the pizza.

" He told me all of this was her fault," I say absently, still a little off my game from the sake I chugged earlier.

" What was?" Elena asks, standing.

" This," I say, gesturing around the room. " The apocalypse. Sephiroth."

" What?" Elena asks, laughing. " Are you joking? I thought Hojo and the Shinras were to blame. How could Tifa possibly be responsible?"

" Apparently Sephiroth was in love with Cloud," I say, feeling guilty but unable to keep such a fabulous secret for very long. If it even is a secret.

Elena almost collapses, she laughs so hard. I'm not sure why, but I feel a little namelessly offended.

" Where did you get that impression?" she asks, trying to regain her composure. " Did he tell you that?"

" Yeah," I say defensively. " He said Sephiroth thought he was in love with Tifa and that's why he went nuts."

" Speaking of nuts," Elena says, sliding on a pair of oven mitts. " I think Cloud has gone off the deep end. I mean. Obviously."

" Maybe," I mutter, though I believe him, for some reason.

Elena and I eat half the pizza there at the table. We want to eat the whole thing, but we stop ourselves, knowing we'll regret it tomorrow if we have to turn back to canned tuna for dinner. So we wrap up the rest and store it in the fridge.

" I think I'm going to go find Rude and the others and hang out for awhile," Elena says after she's put away the leftovers. " Want to come?"

" Nah," I say, heading back toward my room.

" You're not usually one to turn down a party," Elena says. " There's going to be booze, if that's what you're worried about."

" No, I'm just not up for it," I mutter over my shoulder.

" It'll be better than drinking alone in your room," she calls, unable to hide the concern in her voice.

" Who says I'll be drinking?" I say, giving her a look before going into my room and slamming the door behind me. I was planning on drinking, actually. I was going to drain the rest of the sake and black out until morning, when Tifa or Elena will harass me into going to work. Or not. Maybe tomorrow I'll just blow out of town. Maybe no one really cares if I stay or not.

I collapse into the bed. I don't even have the energy to drink. Or I do, but something's off. Something's bugging me. Usually this would be reason enough to start drinking, but tonight I just want to mope. I know what's wrong with me. I don't want to think about it, but I know.

I wonder what Cloud's doing right now. Sleeping, probably. Or fucking Tifa. Ha!

Ha.

I pick up the pillow he slept on and sniff it, feeling pathetic. I mean, I've gotten down on my hands and knees and lapped spilled beer up off a dirty floor before, but this feels even more ridiculous. The pillow doesn't smell like much outside of sweat, but even that's kind of pleasant, and I toss it aside resentfully.

It doesn't happen like this for me. With Rufus it was simply ordained that I would bend to his will, and eventually we fell in love with each other, too, which was convenient. Or not.

Before long I've fallen into a fitful sleep. I have the Rufus dream. Again, I can't catch him. I dream about Cloud, about trading him to the old couple in Wall Market for a plate of stringy dog meat, and then regretting it. In the dream I go back to the stand to try and get him back, but he's gone.

I wake up with a lurching feeling in my stomach, afraid the old couple has cooked Cloud and served him to Artie and the rest of the Wall Market losers.

Then I realize why I've woken up. The room is pitch dark, and someone is sitting on the edge of my bed. My heart pummels my ribcage as I jerk up into a sitting position.

" Cloud?" I ask the silhouette that I find sitting calmly, his back to me.

" Last time you called me Rufus," he says, and I want to pounce on him, I'm so relieved, delivered, ashamed to find him there.

" You smell different," I say without thinking. Shit. Am I still drunk?

He sniffs his shoulder.

" I don't smell that great," he says. " I haven't had a bath since that one I nearly died in."

" That's what I meant," I say, backtracking. " He was very hygienic. You, not so much." He laughs.

" What the hell are you doing here, anyway?" I ask.

" I couldn't sleep," he mutters, still not facing me.

" What makes you think you'll be able to sleep here?" I ask.

" What, you don't want me to?"

" That's not what I meant," I say quickly. " I just mean --"

" I slept pretty well here last night," he says. " Better than I've slept in awhile."

Neither of us says anything or moves for a moment. My heart calms down a bit from the shock of finding someone in my room, and I lie back down, slowly, as if not to disturb him.

" How'd you get in here, anyway?" I ask. " Didn't Elena lock the door?"

" Yeah," he says. " I picked the lock."

" How do you know how to pick locks?" I ask, a little bit impressed.

" I did kind of save the world, you know," he says, turning to look at me now.

" I thought Aeris saved the world," I say. " That was the tune you were singing before, anyway."

" She did," he says, letting out his breath and lying down next to me, staring at the ceiling. " I mean, she did all the hard work. I just handled the technical aspects."

" Like picking lots," I say, grinning into the darkness.

" Right," he says. " And killing Sephiroth. You know, the handiwork. Menial labor."

" Wasn't it hard?" I ask after a few seconds of silence have passed. " To kill him?"

" Yes," he says, sort of breathlessly, and I'm sorry I asked.

" What was the deal, anyway?" I ask, rolling onto my side to face him. " Were you guys screwing each other on the sly all along, or was this some unrequited thing?"

" You're so tactless," Cloud says, but I can hear his smile. " He kissed me once, when I was sixteen. I was half asleep. When I woke up I thought I dreamed it."

" Maybe you did," I say.

" No," he says. " We had a conversation before – before I killed him."

He opens his mouth to continue his thought, but then rolls over. I can see his shoulders shaking, but he's trying to keep quiet, embarrassed.

" I'm sorry, man," I say. " I shouldn't have made you talk about it."

He doesn't respond, just stays turned away from me, shaking the bed with silent sobs.

" Cloud."

" Sorry," he chokes out. " You must think I'm . . .," he trails off. Yeah, I do think he's a bit of a wimp, breaking down all the time. But it's kind comforting to be around a wimp once in awhile. And when I think about what he had to do – if Rufus had turned on me, if I'd had to kill him to save my own life, or the lives of others, of everyone in the entire world – God, I might still not have been able to do it. I would have just let him win, happily. But Cloud did it, he killed him, to save all of us.

Or maybe just because he was still pissed that Sephiroth cleaved his girlfriend in half. Hell hath no fury like a jealous ex, 'specially one with super powers.

Poor fucking kid. I watch him, helplessly, thinking of the first time I held Rufus. Oh, shit, Reno, don't go there. But I can't help it. He'd come to my room in the middle of he night, just like this. He didn't have to pick a lock; he could move freely through all of the rooms in Shinra Tower, including the apartments. The perks of totalitarianism. He'd come because there was a raging thunderstorm outside. They were rare in Midgar; in fact, the last one he remembered had happened when he was seven years old, the day his mother left.

That was one thing we had in common. Our mothers had sliced our lives in half the day they left us. There was before, and there was after.

So big tough guy, Mr. Vice Pres who'd been screwing me for months but had barely given me the ghost of a kiss, came to my room and sat on my bed, and cryptically told me he didn't like rain. It took me a few minutes, but I eventually figured out what was going on. I wanted to laugh my ass off – he deserved it. But instead I lifted up the covers and held out my arms. I think he tried to roll his eyes at me, tried to scoff or toss his hair, but instead he caved and curled up against me. And things were different, after that.

Thinking of it, maybe because I'm still drunk, or maybe only because I have the sake I drank earlier as a convenient excuse, I slide across the bed and throw an arm around Cloud's shaking side. He stiffens a little bit with surprise, then relaxes.

" I just wanted to tell you," he says, his voice ragged. " That I know how you feel."

" About what?"

" Guilty," he says simply. " I – you shouldn't feel bad because of what side you were on, if any of us even had sides. All of us did things we regret."

I press my face against the back of his neck and breathe deeply. It feels like snorting drugs – sinful, indulgent. He smells dirty and sweaty, yeah, but good, still so good.

" But you had to do it," I tell him, knowing I should just let it go, but so desperate to give him some measure of comfort that I'll probably just keep digging myself deeper until daybreak. " You saved the world, 'member?"

" I guess," he says, sighing. I can feel his breath on my hand, which is curled against his chest. " And he wanted me to kill him. He wanted to die. But . . .,"

He doesn't try to finish. I resist the urge to flip him unto his back and crawl on top of him. He's emotional, right, fragile? And I do feel for him, really, despite the fact that the rhythm of his breathing is making my pants tighter.

" How was your evening with Tifa?" I ask snottily instead, my insecurity showing.

" Lonely," he says. " Both of us have been so lonely. Especially when we're together."

" Why is she in love with you, anyway?" I ask, attempting to sound insulting. Cause this is the game I'm accustomed to playing, thanks to Rufus.

" She has this fantasy about a hero," he tells me. " I don't think I'm exactly what she imagined, but no one else showed up so she took what she could get."

" She doesn't seem like the type," I say, wishing I could pull him in closer but not wanting to jam my erection into his thigh.

" She's not, really," he says, " Someday she'll realize that, too."

" You tired?" I ask, after he's been quiet for a few minutes.

" Yeah," he says, rolling onto his stomach. I keep my arm thrown across his back, and rest my lips against his forehead.

" What'are you trying to do to me, punk?" I ask him, my lips moving on his skin as I speak. Almost like a kiss. I can't remember the last time I kissed a guy before doing anything else with him.

" I don't know," he says. " Want me to leave?"

" No. Do you want to leave?"

" I came down here, didn't I?" he says. I feel his eyes close, those gold eyelashes brushing my collarbone, and it sends a shiver down through me.

" Wait," I say, feeling sleepy myself, hazy, comfortable, sated.

" Hmm?"

" Don't fall asleep yet," I say, scooting down so that we're face to face. He looks at me with hooded eyes, and smiles.

" This is just how it was," he mutters against the pillow. " With him."

" Yeah, well," I mutter. " It isn't a dream this time, okay?"

" Okay," he says, and before I can make my awkward move he kisses me, rolling onto his side and yanking me to him.

He falls asleep before I do, but eventually I start to drift off, too, pesky boner waning, blond hair tickling my nose. I have a death grip on him as he sleeps, his head tucked under my chin, his bandaged arms curled against my chest. I feel like I've won a contest, earned the right to protect him, and I'll never let anything hurt him again: my stupid, sappy, mako-eyed boy, the world's suicidal savior and my personal salvation.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

I wake up early, twisting in my sheets and wondering why it's so goddamn hot in my room. Then I see the blond boy I'm lying against, and remember the events of the night before.

The past couple of days have felt weeks – no, months – long. I pull myself from Cloud's sticky side and lie back, watching him sleep. He's on his stomach, with his right hand balled into a fist and covering his mouth. His hair is a mess.

I run a hand through my own hair, still getting used to wearing it short, though it's been months now. I chopped the ponytail off when Tseng died. He'd always hated it, which was all the fun in keeping it, of course. He'd had long hair himself, something I used to give him hell for when he was telling me I looked unprofessional. But his was neatly kept, straight and clean, while mine was always tangled and hastily pulled back. He used to call it my rat tail. I reach back now and feel the fuzz of the short hair at the base of my neck.

Cloud opens his eyes, startling me. He sits up on his elbows, moans and looks around the room.

" What time is it?" he asks, looking to the window. Outside the remains of Midgar are asleep under a heavy, gray fog.

" Late, I think," I say, stretching my arms over my head. " It's just rainy outside. Good day to stay in bed," I add, not meaning to be suggestive – or maybe I am.

" Yeah," he says, in seeming agreement, putting his head back down onto the pillow and shutting his eyes.

" I need a goddamn shower, though," I mutter, sniffing myself and wincing. Cloud laughs, shaking the bed. I look over at him and get a feeling like a kick to the stomach when he grins at me, hugging his pillow.

" Me too," he says. " And I need to wash my clothes."

" Looking for an excuse to get naked?" I ask, deciding to be bold. I prop myself up on an elbow and yank on the bottom of his t-shirt. He sits up and helps me pull it off, and I throw it onto the floor and look back to him: his hair is standing up funny now, and I reach over to mess it up further. He smiles. I look down to survey his body, and it's exactly what I might have expected from a plucky little hero: perfect, perfect. Looking at him makes me feel lanky and gangly, which I am, and my morning wood is just as affected as my pride.

When my eyes fall to his arms, folded over his lap, I reach out and take one of them, examining the bandages.

" How do they feel?" I ask, holding his arm out and trying to regard it clinically, even as his hand wraps around mine.

" Okay," he says quietly.

" Probably need changing," I mutter, not thrilled at the prospect.

" I guess," he says.

" C'mon," I say, kicking off the sheets. " I'm gonna have a shower. You should, uh, join me. So we can wash your wounds."

" Right," he says, grinning and sliding out of bed. " Now who's trying to get me naked?"

" Heh," I say, taking off my tank and throwing it onto the floor as I walk into the tiny bathroom attached to my room. I feel inexplicably nervous. Maybe because it's been so long since I've been with anyone but Rufus. It's even been awhile since I was with Rufus himself. He died four months, two weeks and three days ago. I haven't exactly been looking for action since then, though I did try once, drunk off my ass in the alley behind a bar in Kalm. I think I ended up puking on some guy's jacket and stumbling home alone, but my memory of the evening is not all that clear.

I step out of my pants and boxers, and feel my face turning red as I bend into the tub to turn on the shower. I pull the curtain closed and climb in before I can think about it too much, and the freezing cold water nearly makes me shriek. It feels good after a few minutes, though, washing away the sweat and heat of a night spent wrapped around someone else. I hear the shower rings clicking against the rod, and turn around to see Cloud peeking in at me from the other side of the curtain.

" Is yours cold, too?" he asks. His cheeks are red, or maybe they're still sunburnt from yesterday.

" They're all cold, stupid," I mutter, turning around. " Your Save the Planet crew shut down our water heaters."

" They were mako-powered," he says, unapologetically, stepping into the tub behind me. My heart is racing, and I will myself not to look.

" Shit!" he says in a laugh, tripping a little and grabbing onto my waist to steady himself. " I forget, every time," he says, his mouth close to my ear. " How cold it is."

" Feels good!" I chirp, my voice pitching awkwardly. I look down to see his arms wrapped around my waist. He's taken the bandages off, and the stitched-up cuts stare up at me, killing the hard-on that was starting to rise despite the cold water.

" Damn," I mutter, turning and picking up his arms, focusing my attention only on them. " You really went to town, slick."

" Yeah," he says, his voice low, embarrassed. I feel bad for mentioning it, and bring one of his palms to my lips, kissing it. He looks up at me and smiles.

" You're not gonna try that again, are you?" I ask, reaching around him for the soap, not meeting his eyes.

" No," he says, watching me carefully rub soap over the wounds.

" Cause of me?" I ask jokingly, winking at him. He rolls his eyes.

" Don't flatter yourself," he says. " It was – not what I really wanted. I just --"

" I know," I say, and I do.

When I'm done cleaning his cuts he rinses them under the cold water, and I hand him the shampoo so he can wash his matted blond hair. He watches me, smirking a little and working foam into his hair, while I'm soaping myself up.

" Will you wipe that dumbass look off your face, please?" I snap, glaring back. " Quit laughing at my farmer's tan."

He grins wickedly and says nothing, rinsing the soap out of his hair.

" I didn't get to spend that much time in the company gym, back when I was a Turk," I say, flexing my somewhat pathetic biceps. " I was too busy drinking at the Vice President's wet bar."

" Is that what they're calling it these days?" Cloud says, choking on his laugh before he can even finish the joke. I bite down on my grin, glad he's got his eyes closed and his head tipped back under the water.

" Hey, we didn't all get drilled by General Sephiroth every morning in SOLDIER," I say, pinching one of his nipples. He steps backward and swats at me, laughing. " I'm sure he's responsible for those abs, huh?"

" Sephiroth didn't personally make me do sit-ups when I was in the army," he says, taking the shampoo and reaching up to squirt some of it into my hair. " Quit being so insecure. At least I'm not two heads taller than you. You make me feel short."

" You are short," I say, looking down at him while I rub the shampoo in.

He moves to the back of the shower while I rinse the suds out of my hair, and I get a few good looks at him as I blink through the water. He's got possibly the best looking body I've ever set eyes on, scars and all, and it doesn't hurt that he's flushing from head to toe.

" And anyway I've actually never been drilled by anyone," he mutters, glancing at me nervously, then away, then back. " If you know what I mean."

" Then I'm about to be the first?" I ask, only partly joking. I turn off the shower and shake the water out of my hair, unable to look at him.

" I don't know," he says, when I finally meet his eyes. " Are you?"

That was more than I needed. I go to him and scoop him up in my arms, lifting him off the floor of the tub – my muscles may not be all that impressive, but they can do the fucking job. He cups my head in his hands and tips it back slightly, kissing me, his tongue flirting along the edges of my mouth before meeting mine. I moan into his mouth and crush him back against the wall of the shower, praying I don't slip on the slick floor of the tub.

" B-bed," he stutters, when he pulls back to get his breath. " I'm freezing," he explains lamely, grinning. He is – I can feel the goosebumps rising all over his skin.

" Whatever you say, shorty," I say with a smirk, picking him up properly, his legs thrown over my arm. He yanks the shower curtain out of the way and I stumble back into the bedroom with him and drop him on the mattress. He grins up at me and holds his arms out, as if I need further invitation.

I don't think I'll ever be able to stop kissing this body, this skin. I think it might be all I need – I think I might come just from running my tongue up his neck toward his jaw line, probably owing to the fact that he makes the most delicious little gasping noises as I do it, digging his fingers into my shoulders. Before I can seem too premature, I pull myself off of him for a moment and reach back to grab the blankets, wrapping them around us.

" Warm yet?" I ask breathlessly, pouring my body back over his, under the blankets now.

" Uh-huh," he says, kissing me on the mouth, then the cheeks, the bridge of my nose, my eyelids. He stops for a moment, breathing heavily, and stares up at me.

" Don't make a joke about the freckles," I say, running a hand down his chest as I speak. He giggles, then gasps when my hand finds his dick.

" I like them," he moans, his eyes fluttering shut as I stroke him.

" Hmm?" I mutter, dipping my head to suck on his earlobe.

" The freckles," he says in a sigh, jerking up into my hand.

" Good, cause they're pretty much everywhere," I say, kissing his neck. He laughs stupidly, his eyes closed and his mind someplace else.

" Cloud," I mutter dreamily, my face burning. He exhales deeply and puts his cheek against mine, and suddenly I'm embarrassed. Leaving my hand wrapped around him I pause, and bite my tongue.

" Hey, have you done this before?" I mutter, unable to stop myself. " I mean, seriously, have you?"

He looks up at me with hooded eyes and collects himself for a moment.

" Sex?" he asks after a pause, and I laugh despite myself.

" Uh, yeah."

He gives me an insulted look, then wilts a little.

" Yes, but not with, you know. A guy," he looks away from me and I let go of him, smoothing down my damp hair, suddenly self conscious.

" With Aeris?" I can't help but ask, remembering the two of them together, running away from me as I chased them through her church.

He says nothing, but I see a sad little dimple pucker on his cheek and then disappear, and I've got my answer.

" Interesting," I say, and he stiffens a bit beneath me, but I can't stop myself now. " Anyone else?"

" Tifa," he spits back, and the floor drops out from under me. I jerk away from him like he's just taken my weapon of choice and shocked me in the ribs with it. Which, in a way, he has.

" You had sex with Tifa?" I practically scream, my boner crumpling downward like a disappointed sigh.

" Yeah, so?" Cloud asks, frowning and sitting up on his elbows.

" When?" is all I can manage to say, my mind racing. Why is this bothering me? Oh fuck it, I don't even care. All I know is that I feel sharply and suddenly like an enormous fool: what the hell am I _doing_?

" Awhile ago," he says, letting out his breath. " What do you care?"

" I – don't!" I exclaim, but I'm already climbing out of the bed.

" What's the matter?" he asks, watching me pace madly about the room.

" Why'd you sleep with her?" I blurt out before I can stop myself.

" I was – about to go – confront him," he says, staring me down. " Sephiroth."

" Oh, HIM," I snarl, not sure what I mean.

" We were in this tent on the edge of the crater, and it was freezing." He stops, and looks down at his hands. " She was – I . . . It isn't my proudest moment."

" Ha!" I exclaim, and he glares at me.

" What's the big deal?" he shouts. " This was months ago – God, it feels like _years_ ago."

" I don't give a damn!" I tell him, entirely unconvincingly, throwing out my arms. " Hell, you can run upstairs and go at with Teef right now if you want. I just . . ."

He shakes his head at me, and I stand staring at him, hands on my hips. I open my mouth to – I don't know what, apologize? But before I can someone knocks on the apartment door, and I turn.

" Who's that?" Cloud grumbles, pulling the covers up to his shoulders.

" Probably Tifa, coming over for a quickie," I say, knowing I'm not being particularly clever, but unable to help it.

" She – I hate you," Cloud says plainly, scowling and looking away.

" How was it, anyway?" I ask, stepping into my boxers, and then my pants. I have to batter down a nauseous feeling, though I know he's kidding. Or at least I hope he is.

" Terrible!" Cloud screams back. " Is that what you want me to say?"

" Oh my God, we're having a lover's quarrel," I hear myself saying. He gives me a frightened sort of look and I'm mortified. I turn abruptly and go for the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind me.

" What?" I shout when I pull open the apartment's front door, part of me truly expecting to see a lingerie-clad Tifa waiting there. Instead I find one of my other least-favorite people in the remains of the world: Reeve.

" Nice, Reno," he mutters, giving me a once over. I look down at my dirty cargo pants and pale, pathetic chest, and I want to slam the door in his face.

" What do you want?" I ask, adjusting my pants self-consciously.

" I have something to tell you and Elena," he says, looking over my shoulder into the apartment.

" She's at work," I tell him, pulling the door toward me and blocking his view.

" I know," he says, " And you should be, too. Yet somehow I knew I'd find you here."

" Whatever," I mutter.

" I'm not kidding around, Reno," he says, making his squirrelly little face serious. " You were brought here for a reason, to work."

" You worked for Shinra, too, asshole," I remind him in a hiss.

" And I'm doing my part to undo the damage the company did," he says, glaring at me. " As you should be. Unless you'd rather cool your heels in jail for awhile."

" I'd like to see you try to arrest me."

" Have you got Cloud Strife in there?" he asks, taking me off guard.

" What do you mean, have I 'got' him?" I ask, puffing up my chest. " I'm not holding him captive."

" I've heard he's injured," Reeve says, straightening. " He doesn't need to return to work today – in fact, it's his choice either way. He doesn't need to return at all if he doesn't want to, he has no debt to repay, far from it. But you, my friend, were given a plea bargain. You seem healthy enough to me, and if you don't report to sector five in an hour there's going to be trouble."

" So this is what you had to tell me and Elena?" I ask with a scoff. " That I'm a lazy ass and my free time is up?"

" Elena shouldn't need to hear that from me," Reeve mutters. I start toward him and he smirks.

" Calm down," he says, stepping back. " I – the matter I'd like to speak to the two of you about is much more sensitive. I would like you, she and Rude to meet me tonight in the common room to discuss that."

" All the surviving Turks," I say, narrowing my eyes. " What's going on?"

" I might – I might have some very good news for you," he says, his tone clipped.

" What is it? Are we free to go?" I ask, though I'm not sure I want to, if that means leaving Cloud. Even if he did sleep with Tifa.

" Reno, did you listen to anything I just said?" Reeve asks, deadpan. " It's something else – I won't discuss it here. Just meet me at eight o'clock." He turns then, straightens his shirt and begins to walk off down the hall, leaving me standing half-naked and confused.

" Hey, great, should I bring the beer or will you?" I call after him, but he doesn't turn to acknowledge the joke.

" Dickhead," I mutter as I shut the door.

When I turn around Cloud is standing, dressed, in the middle of the kitchen, his arms folded over his chest.

" I'm hungry," he mutters.

" Well, that's your problem," I grumble, walking back toward the bedroom. " I have to go back to saving the planet, or they'll drag my ass off to whatever makeshift prison you and your cronies have set up for the evil remains of Shinra."

" I could talk to Tifa," Cloud calls after me. " I could ask her to let you go."

" It's not up to Tifa," I shout back, furious at the mention of her name. " I told you before, I can leave whenever I want." I pull a t-shirt on over my head and ignore my growling stomach, step into my boots and head for the door. Cloud is watching me, looking a little fragile, but also pissed off.

" Then why are you still here?" he asks.

" Cause," I grumble, and, without pausing to think about it, I walk to him and grab his elbows, yank him to me and lay one on him. I expect him to yelp in surprise, or maybe reel back and deck me, but he opens his mouth and swallows my kiss whole, like he was expecting it, the little fucker. I pull back and wink at him.

" You're so weird," he mumbles, shaking his head at me.

" This from someone who slept with Tifa," I say, rolling my eyes as I walk off.

" Oh, please," he says, standing in place, watching me go. " She's not that bad."

" Precisely," I mutter under my breath as I head out the door. And that's when I realize why this is bothering me so much. I'm jealous.

* * *

After spending most of the last two days rolling about in bed with Cloud, going back to work in the desolate wasteland of Midgar is a harsh awakening. The fog from the late morning has cleared, giving way to the familiar unfiltered sunlight, which beats down onto the twisted remains of the city with a kind of vigilant disdain. When I get to the work station I'm given the familiar shovel and wheelbarrow, and I feel like throwing them at the do-gooder volunteer who hands them off cheerfully.

" You'll be in Tifa's group today, Reno," he chirps, as if this is a privilege.

" Of course I will," I say in a groan, shutting my eyes for a moment. I turn and pick through the dusty, sweaty people who are working in the mid-afternoon sun, looking for one with long brown hair and giant boobs. Finally I find her, working on the edges of what used to be a little courtyard in the middle of the sector five residential district. She's got a t-shirt tied over her face as a makeshift mask, to block out the dust and the stink of death.

" Reporting for duty," I mumble, coming up behind her. I see her eyebrows crease from behind the protective goggles she's wearing, and she pulls down the t-shirt that was covering her mouth.

" It's about time," she says snottily, turning from me, and something about her tone just seals the deal: say the worst thing possible, Reno. You know you want to.

" So I heard you and Cloud fucked," I blurt, and she wheels back around, with pure fury in her eyes.

" Excuse me?" she hisses, stepping closer.

" I don't know, I thought maybe if I provoked you into killing me I'd get out of work," I say, looking away from her. My heart is actually racing, and I feel bad for having said it. Not bad enough to apologize or back down, but even so.

" I . . . you," she stutters, trying to get her bearings. " I can't deal with you right now," she finally says, exasperated. " Get over there where Elena is, by that old hotel. Go help her – just – go."

I start to walk off, but she calls out to me and I turn back around.

" Did he tell you that?" she asks meekly. I see something like hope in her eyes, as if she thinks Cloud and I have only been bonding over his angsty, secret love for her. I have an inclination to tell her I had his dick in my hand when he told me about their little tryst, but I figure I've already caused enough trouble for one morning.

" Sure did," I mutter instead, turning and heading over to Elena. I can feel Tifa standing in place behind me as I go, frozen and at a loss.

When I reach Elena she pulls up her own goggles and smiles brightly at me.

" There you are," she says. " Where's Cloud?"

" What am I, his babysitter?" I grumble, hoisting my shovel.

" Kind of, yeah," Elena says, putting the goggles back on and squinting at me. " Is he okay?"

" He slept with Tifa," I blurt. Whoops, there it is again.

" When? Last night?" Elena asks, boggling. I see the bizarre beginning of a smile on her lips.

" What, would you be happy about that or something?" I snap, scandalized.

" I guess so," she says with a shrug. " He's so unhappy, and you know she's in love with him."  
" Well, he's not in love with her, alright?" I say, jamming my shovel into a pile of debris. " I'm talking about – this was months ago, Elena. Might as well have been years."

" Reno, I think he's getting to you," she says, starting in on the debris herself.

" No he's not, he's not my type at all!" I say in a rush, jerking up. " He's whiny – and – I don't know, he's such a little do-gooder, and, God – he slept with _Tifa_!"

" I only mean you're starting to sound as crazy as he does!" Elena shouts back at me. " Calm down! You're not like . . . wait a minute, did he sleep with you, too?"

" Only in the purely scientific sense," I mutter, starting to feel dizzy from the smell of this place and our conversation.

" What on earth does that mean?" Elena asks, standing and staring at me.

" You look ridiculous in that getup," I say evasively, eying her as I dump twisted metal and dirt into my wheelbarrow. She's wearing khaki pants, a shirt that's about two thousand sizes too big for her, and a handkerchief over her hair.

" Don't change the subject," she says, that devious little smile alighting again.

" You know I _slept_ with him," I hiss, leaning toward her. " But that was like – real sleep. Not sex."

" Oh, I see," she says, but she's still grinning to herself. " Well, maybe that's what happened between he and Tifa, too."

" No, that was sex," I say, sighing.

" Reno –"  
" Don't start," I grumble. " And by the way, I got a little visit from Reeve this afternoon."

" So he's the one who talked you into coming out here to work," she says, smirking.

" Yeah, and he wants you, me and Rude to meet him to talk about something tonight," I tell her. " He was real cryptic about it. Typical Shinra upper management. Shit. Nothing changes."

Elena bursts into laughter.

" How can you laugh?" I ask, shaking my head, unable to bite away a smile myself. " Look at us, we're in the middle of the apocalypse. We're the fucking _clean up crew _for the apocalypse."

" Only the Turks could still manage to have a good time, right?" she says, swatting at me playfully. " I wonder what Reeve wants with all of us?"

" Who the hell knows," I say, looking up at the cloudless sky and wincing in the direction of the sun. " I need a drink. Speaking of the Turks."

" There's water over by the equipment tent," Elena tells me.

" Not that kind of drink," I say. I think about the bottle of sake sitting on my bedside table in the apartment. Hopefully Cloud won't drain it while I'm gone. But nah, he's not that kind of guy. I'll finish up here, get something to eat, and go back there to find him waiting. We'll drink the whole bottle in five minutes and then fall into bed and go to town, and I'll be able to saunter in late to Reeve's little reunion party, stinking of sex and booze. Just like the good old days.

But that's not exactly how it goes down, of course. The hours pass and I start to think that perhaps skipping breakfast before doing this kind of physical labor in the sweltering heat was not such a good idea. I start to sway on my feet around three o'clock, and by four I feel like I can barely lift my shovel.

" Are you alright?" Elena asks, turning to me. " You don't look so good."

" M'okay," I grunt, determined to be a bad ass, though I can barely speak, as my tongue feels like a dried out slug that has died in my mouth.

" Maybe you need some water?" she says.

I shake my head, only because I can't imagine making it over to the equipment tent without falling on my face.

" Maybe you should put some goggles on?" she suggests, ridiculously, and I'm already on my way down. I'm only out for a few minutes, but when I open my eyes I'm staring up at Elena, Tifa and Cid, who's smoking a cigarette and grimacing down at me sympathetically.

" Hey can I have a drag?" I ask him, though I'm pretty sure it comes out sounding like incoherent mumbling.

" What happened to him?" Tifa asks. It sounds like she's speaking in slow-motion, which makes me laugh, causing the three of them to look at me with increased concern.

" He just passed out," Elena says, and I shut my eyes and breathe in the fumes from Cid's cigarette. It's been so long since I had a smoke.

Before I know what's happening I'm being hoisted up by Cid and Barrett, who has appeared out of nowhere. They drag me over to the water tent and force me to drink water from a plastic cup. I gulp it down eagerly once I've recovered a bit, and after I've had four refills I start to feel somewhat normal again.

I look up to find a worried Elena and angry Tifa watching me from the front of the tent.

" I forgot to eat," I explain. Tifa rolls her eyes.

" Brilliant," she says, sighing. " Well, get out of here. Go eat something, and don't bother coming back - the work day's almost over, anyway."

" Goodie," I say, standing on wobbly legs.

" Can you make it back to the dorms by yourself?" Elena asks, taking my arm.

" I'll survive," I say, beginning to feel embarrassed, especially in the presence of Barrett and Cid, who are brawny and capable. I'm no revolutionary – I'm a Turk, goddammit. I'm not used to this kind of menial labor.

" Here, kid," Cid says as I'm starting to amble off, handing me a cigarette. I stick it in my mouth and he lights it for me, grins.

" Oh, that's just what he needs," Tifa mutters, giving him a look.

" For once, you speak the truth," I say, blowing a smoke ring over her head. She gives me an exhausted sort of look, and I feel sorry for her. Something about her persistent nagging almost makes me think she cares about my well being, which is novel, really. But I can't forgive her for bagging Cloud before me.

Thinking of him, I turn and walk out of the tent, anxious to get back to the dorms. Though I'd rather dive into bed and pick up where we left off, I know I won't be able to stop myself from questioning him further about this little roll in the hay with Tifa. I guess I'm a masochist.

By the time I get back to the dorms I'm feeling not so great again, smoking as I walk, and listening to my already-peeling skin sizzle in the sun. When I reach the shade of the lobby I let out my breath, put the cigarette out against the bottom of my boot and toss the it into the trash. I go to the foot of the stairs and look upward, at the ten flights I'll have to climb. Resigned to it, I let out my breath, slump my shoulders, and put my foot on the first stair.

It takes every ounce of energy I have left to make it to the door of my apartment, and when I get it open I fall clumsily inside and go for the cabinets. I take out a can of tuna and, after fumbling with shaking hands to make the can opener work, hungrily eat the stinky, flaky fish with my fingers. Only on a day like today could this shit taste good.

" Cloud?" I call, my mouth full, turning to look around at the apartment. Now that one hunger is satisfied I'm ready to fulfill another. But he doesn't answer. I finish the tuna and leave the empty can sitting in the sink, go back to my bedroom and peer inside, but he's gone. I scoff in the direction of the bed – he's made it up neatly, military-issue corners tucked in perfectly.

Though I know I should be drinking water, I go to the bedside table, screw the top off of the sake bottle and take a long swig. It's warm and it goes down hard, the taste of it mingling with the tuna and ash I've already got on my tongue in an entirely unpleasant way.

" Guh," I moan aloud, sticking out my tongue and putting the bottle down. I feel like puking, but I don't even have the energy to retch, so instead I flop down onto my carefully made bed and whimper pathetically. It's hot as hell in my room, and my skin feels like it's on fire.

I'm starting to drift into an uncomfortable sleep when I hear the door of the apartment open and close, and somehow I know it's Cloud just by the sound of his footsteps. I'm not sure how I'd describe them – apologetic, somehow. Which is not to say that he's apologizing to me or anyone in particular with his gait: it's more like he's apologizing for himself every step of the way.

" Hey," he says, appearing beside me and taking my shoulder, rolling me onto my back. I groan and clutch my stomach, squint up at him.

" I'm gonna blow any minute," I assure him. " You might want to back off."

" How thoughtful," Cloud says absently, and I hear a bag rustling. " But I'll take my chances. Here."

He thrusts out a soda bottle, and I sit up on my elbows, salivating at the sight of it.

" It's cherry," he says, handing it to me. " Yuffie traded me some of them for materia."

" Damn," I mutter, popping off the top. " That's a pretty raw deal you got there, much as I do appreciate this." I take a long drink and the sweet bubbles taste incredible, washing away the filth of everything else I've consumed today.

" You're welcome," Cloud says, sitting on the bed and opening a soda for himself. " And I don't need materia anymore," he adds quietly, taking a drink.

" Is that so?" I say, feigning disinterest and tipping back another giant gulp of soda.

" I'm not so interested in fighting, now," he says, looking down at his soda bottle.

" Well, that's a damn shame," I say, reaching for him. " You did a number on my old friends in Wall Market yesterday. It was a thing of beauty."

" Defending my friends is one thing," he says, leaning into my touch. I slide my hand under his t-shirt and touch his back, which is far cooler than mine.

" So I'm your friend now?" I ask, pretending to find the idea hilarious.

" I don't know what you are," he says, standing, irritated. I feel bad for picking on him, but I only finish off my soda and plunk the bottle down on the floor. I hear water running in the bathroom, and when he walks back in he's wringing a wet washcloth onto my bedroom floor.

" What are you –"

" Shut _up_ for a second, wouldya?" he says sharply, sitting down on the bed again. He brings the cloth, which is ice cold, up to my forehead. I tense in surprise at first, and then settle down beneath the cool moisture, happily melting.

" You're sunburned," he says, not meeting my eyes.

" Your little lover girl has been working me to the bone," I say, shutting my eyes. I instantly regret bringing up Tifa again, but we both knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

" Don't call her my lover girl," he says, and I can't tell if he's earnestly perturbed or just playing along.

I open my mouth to make a half-formulated joke about the boobs, but then I hear his voice in my head: _shut _up_ for a second_. Just a second. I'll consent to that, I decide, since his washcloth trick feels surprisingly good, and I'm starting to drift off, anyway. I tell myself that I'd be up for a fight if only I wasn't so damn tired.

" I should really go back out there," he says to himself, sighing. " I know they need help."

" No, you should stay here," I mumble deliriously. " I need help."

" That's for sure," he says with a snort. He's got the washcloth over my eyes now, and I'm glad I don't have to look up into his face as I chew my lip to keep from laughing. Pretty soon I don't have to bother, though, as he bends down and kisses me quickly.

I pull the washcloth off of my eyes and look over at him as he lies down next to me.

" Truth is, I don't really know where to go from here," he mutters up at the ceiling.

" So don't go anywhere," I say, rolling toward him and smashing my face between his neck and shoulder. " Stay here."

" I just didn't have much of a plan," he continues, ignoring me. " Outside of dying."

I shudder a little then, but I tell myself it's only heatstroke. I know he feels it, too, and he turns toward me, but I don't look up. I pretend to be asleep, and he pets my hair, knowing I'm faking.

" I don't want to be anywhere else, either," he admits, and, to my great horror, I feel something like a tear stinging the corner of my eye. It must be water from the washcloth, I tell myself, or sweat.

And anyway, it doesn't matter. Whatever either of us wants, we can't stay here forever.

* * *

I fall asleep before too long, and after a dense, dreamless slumber, I'm awakened by the sound of Elena's timid knocking.

" Reno?" she calls through the closed door, and I lift my head off the pillow and blink into the darkness. It's late, and my fuzzy mind begins to remember things slowly – a meeting with Reeve . . . where am I? Furthermore, where's my bedmate? My hand slides across the mattress, but Cloud is gone.

" Coming," I moan, sitting up slowly and groaning with the effort. I walk to the door, rubbing sleep from my eyes and wondering where Cloud has wandered off to. When I open the door Elena is standing with her trademark look of concern, freshly showered and dressed in the best outfit she's managed to salvage: a long-sleeved purple t-shirt and some black trousers.

" Look at you," she says, shaking her head. " Reeve is going to be mad." I glance down at my rather rumpled attire and shrug.

" He's not my boss anymore," I say childishly.

" Actually, he is," Elena reminds me. " Only now he's in control of your potential imprisonment rather than just your job retention."

" Oh, whatever," I mumble, rubbing my eyes as I follow her out into the apartment. " Have you seen Cloud?" I ask, faking a yawn to convey my pretend disinterest. It's actually got me a little worried, and quite irritated. Where would he have gone; is there a spontaneous Avalanche reunion tonight, too?

" No, I thought he'd moved back to his place," Elena says as we walk out into the hallway. " Anyway, c'mon. We're going to be late."

When we get down to the lobby we see Reeve waiting for us in a corner, Rude sitting on the arm of a couch nearby. Rude beams when he sees us, and Reeve frowns deeply. I walk to Rude and cross my arms over my chest, and as I wait for the familiar tirade about my tardiness I'm almost nostalgic for the days of Shinra.

" This is a first," Reeve says coolly. " Rude – though he was late – was actually the most punctual Turk of the evening."

" I'm sorry," Elena gushes. " I was getting ready and –"

" It's my fault," I mutter. " I was asleep."

" I might have guessed," Reeve says with a sigh, delicately picking a hair off of his right pant leg. " Anyway, it doesn't matter. What I have to tell the three of you is . . . big."

" We're getting raises!" Rude jokes, looking to Elena and I to laugh along with him. Charitably, we both muster half-assed grins.

" It's about Tseng," Reeve says, and we all fall silent, our eyes jerking back to him. I feel a stab in my chest, and I hear Elena draw her breath in sharply.

" What about him?" Rude asks, standing, defensive.

Reeve seems to falter for a moment, not sure if he wants to go on, but he steels himself.

" He might be alive," he says gently, leaning forward.

I wait for Elena's knees to give out, and when she sinks toward the ground I catch her and pull her back up again. She looks at me desperately, tears already in her eyes.

" How do – what – why do you think so?" I finally manage to get out, my heart hammering as Elena trembles in my hands. Rude moves to her other side and puts an arm around her, holding her in place.

_Elena, don't be so weak_. How many times have I barked that at the girl? Now I don't blame her; I feel like I might topple myself. It can't be true. He died. We saw it. I doubt there is any event in our lives that any of us remembers more clearly.

" You left him with those fellows who lived in the temple, correct?" Reeve asks, clearing his throat.

" We left his body with them," I tell him coldly, trying to beat down the shake in my voice. " He was dead. They shooed us away – they were going to bury him – where the hell do you get off –"

" And you knew they were going to bury him how?" Reeve cuts in. " To my memory they couldn't speak."

Elena gets heavier in my arms and I hand her off to Rude, who is staring at Reeve with giant, bewildered eyes, his sunglasses pushed up onto his bald head. I can see that he wants to believe this. Well, I won't. I glance at Elena, not sure what she's thinking. She's not looking at Reeve, not looking at anything. Her face is pale.

" Look, we thought it would be nice," I say, my voice cracking now. " They were real righteous people, we thought they'd send him off right, better than we could."

" People?" Reeve says, raising an eyebrow. " Aeris called them the spirits of the Ancients."

" Spirits?" Rude says, his voice an uncharacteristic squeak.

" That's a lot of bullsh—" I start to say, my heart in my throat, but Reeve cuts me off, looking directly at Elena now, though she doesn't seem to be registering any of this.

" They were spirits," he says softly, speaking in her direction. " You all didn't see . . . inside the temple . . . Aeris . . . They had powers we didn't understand –"

" Enough!" I shout, feeling the color drain from my own face. " What the hell – where is this coming from?" I demand, furious. " Why does this mean Tseng's alive?"

" He was bleeding real bad . . .," Rude mutters, his eyes going spacey now. " Wasn't moving . . . we thought he was . . .,"

I can hear guilt in his voice, and I won't accept it.

" He _was _dead!" I scream, and Reeve jumps out of his seat and grabs my wrist.

" Keep it down," he hisses.

" No!" I shout, shoving him off of me. " Why does it have to be some kind of secret? What the hell kind of game are you trying play, you stuck up piece of –"

" Reno." Elena's voice is barely audible, but she tugs lightly on the hem of my shirt, and I turn to see her staring at me pleadingly.

" Just let him finish," she begs in a whisper. She turns back to Reeve.

" Remember the Cait Sith robot that I used to spy on Avalanche?" he asks us, his voice low. " Well, the original device was destroyed when the Temple of the Ancients collapsed in on itself. Or so I thought. The robot had a transmitter device that I used to communicate with Avalanche while I was controlling the robot from Midgar."

Now it's my turn to give in to my shaky knees, and I land hard on the lobby floor, my vision blurring. I think I know where this is going. Holy shit. I feel Elena's hand on my head, and I'm not sure if she's trying to reassure me or keep her own balance.

" I found a batch of the Shinra-issue transmitters when we were cleaning up the ruined headquarters," Reeve says, letting out his breath. " Some of them were still useable, and I started to reprogram them for short-distance communication so the relief workers could use them within the city. But,"

He pauses, takes a breath.

" I got a transmission," he tells us. " It was fuzzy and I couldn't make out any words, but there was definitely someone out there trying to contact Shinra headquarters. I wasn't sure who might still be trying to use that old frequency, so I traced the location as best I could."

" The Temple of the Ancients," I say heavily, looking up at him.

" It's coming from somewhere around that area," he confirms quietly.

Elena bursts into tears, and falls down beside me. I wordlessly take her into my arms, and Rude kneels down behind her and puts his hands on her shaking shoulders.

" We left him," she sobs, gasping for breath.

" Now wait a minute," Reeve says, squatting down to our sad little assembly, a quivering wreck of former Turks, all falling to pieces over the fact that our slave-driving boss might still be alive. I thought I understood how much his death had affected us, but I hadn't fully realized it until this moment.

" Listen," Reeve says. " I can't be sure of anything. One of those spirit things might have found the device and attempted to communicate with it."

" What do magic spirits need transmitters for?" Rude blurts out desperately, and I can't help but burst into laughter. I'm afraid Elena will give me a shocked and accusatory look, but instead she only breaks into a grin and starts cracking up, her head dipping toward the floor as she shakes with choked laughter and tears.

" What?" Rude says, hurt. " Can't they communicate telepathically or something? I don't fucking know!"

" Holy shit, holy _shit_!" is all I can say, squeezing Elena's shoulders as we both giggle incessantly, somewhere on the verge of completely losing our minds. " Reeve you better not be wrong about this," I say, pausing to chuckle. " Cause if you are I'll fucking kill you, my man."

Somehow this only makes Elena and I laugh harder, though Rude still looks quite confused.

" So are we going to go get Tseng or what?" he asks, exasperated. This stills our laughter, and we wind down until we're somber again, looking to Reeve.

He looks at each of us in turn before taking a deep breath and straightening his shoulders.

" I think an investigation is warranted," he says with considerable gravity, and I feel a simultaneous shudder of hope and terror move through the three of us – and maybe through Reeve, too.

What if he is alive? Actually alive, trying to get back to us all this time?

And what if he isn't?

* * *

I'm back in my room in less than thirty minutes, after having flown blindly up the stairs to the tenth floor, not feeling the burn at all this time. I don't even bother to turn the light on in my room, just reach for the duffel that has been sitting under my bed since I was brought here from Kalm.

We're leaving for the southern island at dawn, and I'm too damn wired to do anything but pack. I only have a few things, and at the rate I'm moving packing will likely only take ten seconds, but I can't think straight enough to worry about what I'll do to keep myself busy after I'm done. Not just yet. At the moment just throwing dirty tanks and cargos into a dusty old bag feels exhilarating enough.

I stop in my tracks when I crash into Cloud, who comes into the room abruptly and staggers backward, clearly surprised to find me tearing frantically around the room, clean underwear and socks balled into my hands.

" What are you doing?" he asks, flipping on the light.

" Can't talk now, packing," I say, hardly able to process who he is at the moment, my mind is racing so furiously.

" Okay," he says slowly. " Packing for what, exactly?"

" Trip," I say, ripping the sheets off the bed and stuffing them madly into the duffel. " Going to the Temple of the Ancients."

" The Temple," Cloud says, and I can hear in his voice that the place isn't exactly a sunny memory for him, either.

" And why are you going there?" he asks.

The fact that I actually have to say it out loud brings my frantic trajectory to a halt, and I stand still for a moment, breathing heavily.

" Tseng might be alive," I tell him.

" Damn," he says quietly, after a pause. " That's – that would be great, Reno. But why all of a sudden--?"

I can't stand it anymore, this wild energy that's been ripping through me since Reeve spoke those same words to me only half an hour ago. I have to do something with this drive, I can't contain it until dawn, and so I cut him off in the middle of his question and fall onto him, kissing him hard on the mouth and pressing into him until his back is smashed against the wall. The heat of his body only fuels the fire, and he has to wrench my mouth off of his to get his breath.

" Wait," he pleads, panting hard, his eyes locked on mine.

" It might not even be true," I gush, my voice wavering, threatening to crack. " But I just feel like – like everything –,"

I shake my head, unable to put it into words. I'd rather kiss him: it seems that everything surging through me right now can be far better expressed in sex than in words, and I'm at least content to try. But I don't want to bruise the poor kid, so I take his face carefully in my hands and bring it back to mine, breathing into him as I kiss him, trying to ease up a little, though my dick feels like it might split through the crotch of my pants, and the scrape of his own erection against mine isn't helping matters.

" Reno," he says sweetly, when I pull back again, my chest heaving in rhythm with his. " I'm happy for you."

Something about the sincerity in his mako eyes just seals it.

_I fucking _love_ you_, I think, staring back at him, at his sheepish smile. I've never said it, not to anyone. Never will, it's cheap. But it's there in my head, and it makes the whole room spin even faster. I want to scream it, want to scream _something_, but the words won't work, I know they won't, so I go to the door, push it closed and shove him backward onto the bed. He bounces once and then I'm on top of him, pulling off his shirt, kissing his neck. He laughs and moans and – oh. He's perfect just there, underneath me. Tailor-made; if only we had known it from the start.

I feel drunk, and I scan my memory for what I've consumed today as I unbuckle Cloud's belt and yank his pants down. All I can recall is that one little sip of sake, which was disgustingly hot and bizarrely singular. Is it possible that I'm actually sober? The thought is slightly frightening, but it doesn't slow me down, and I have Cloud's dick in my mouth before he can catch his breath.

He groans and I think maybe Elena will hear, but I don't care, and neither will she. Elena is in outer space after hearing about Tseng, understandably. She might actually get a kick out of the idea that Cloud Strife and I are going at it in the next room. Tseng alive, and Reno in bed with the Avalanche poster boy: how delightfully absurd the world has become.

" Wait, wait," Cloud begs, his hands in my hair, and I take that as my cue to eighty-six the foreplay. I climb on top of him with a mind to finish what we started earlier, but when I get there I realize it's him I want inside of me. I need him, even, need that plucky hero strength for everything that lies ahead of me.

" Fuck me," I say, flopping onto my back. He crawls on top of me and looks at me with concern.

" You – but – really? I thought –"

" _Please_."

Rufus used to get off on that, me begging. Well, what can I say. Old habits do die hard. And at least I left off the 'sir.'

" I don't know how," Cloud says, pathetically. I give him a look.

" You'll figure it out," I growl, pulling his face down to mine. Before I know it he's sliding inside of me, still slick from my mouth. He's timid at first, but then I feel his sigh reverberate through me, like a release in itself when he's fully encased in the heat of my body.

" Goddddd," I moan, wrapping my legs around the small of his back. It's been awhile. I missed this, and I've never been quite this coherent while I was in the act, despite the fact that I'm dizzy with near insanity after the events of tonight and the past few days.

" Oh," he says weakly, his head dipping down, his eyelashes trembling against the skin of my neck and making me shiver all around him. His voice is small and for a moment I'm afraid he's finished, but then he starts moving in and out of me, carefully at first, then faster, harder.

" Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah," I stutter mindlessly as he straightens up and my back arches, my legs going up over his shoulders.

He grabs my dick and pumps me inexpertly, an inadvertent tease. I'm close to coming anyway, just from staring up at him as he moves inside of me, his boyish face bright red from cheek to cheek, across the bridge of his nose.

" I – I," he struggles, and then "Unnhh!"

He collapses onto me when he comes, my legs falling mercifully back down around him, my own muscles relaxing as his contract. All it takes is the friction of his tight stomach on my cock and I'm done, my come landing somewhere between his neck and his left ear. He doesn't seem to notice, however, only lifts his head and gives me a dopey look like he can't quite remember who he is. I give his stomach a little push and he slides out of me, exhaling and falling next to me on the bed.

" Hang on," I say, letting out my own breath as I reach for the washcloth on the bedside table, left there from when he patted at my sunburn earlier. I wipe him clean and then toss it onto the floor. When I turn back to him he huddles hastily against me, his face pressed to my chest. I can appreciate the posture; it's always hard to look someone in the eye after you've had their come hanging from your ear. I pull him into my arms and rest my chin on the top of his head, absently stroke the short hairs at the base of his neck.

" That was good," he murmurs dully, already starting to drift off.

" Yeah," I agree, my voice hoarse, my wild energy spent. Now I can sleep. That was just what I needed; I give him a squeeze in silent appreciation.

" I'm coming with you," he says after a moment, surprising me, because I thought he'd fallen asleep.

" Huh?"

" Tomorrow," he says, not lifting his head. " To the Temple. I want to come with you."

" You can't," I say automatically.

" Why not?"

" It's . . . a Turk thing," I mutter. He stiffens in my arms and I feel bad, not least of all because the idea of leaving him for a week fills me with an inexplicable panic. But I couldn't bring him along, couldn't spend the nights in the jungle artfully screwing him while we searched for Tseng. And what the hell would I tell Rude? He'd never let me hear the end of it. I haven't even been straight with Elena about Cloud yet, though she probably guessed at the truth even before I did.

I don't know what I'll do. Don't know how I'll ever explain Cloud to anyone, or to myself, in the light of day. Don't know if Tseng could really be alive or if we're holding onto a fool's hope.

I don't know: I don't know anything, but it feels good not to be so certain anymore. In a world where Tseng might still be alive anything is possible, including beating back my pride enough to keep this kid at my side. Though even in my sated, sleepy state I can't imagine how I'll ever pull that one off.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

I'm awake an hour before dawn, lying on my back and waiting to leave. It doesn't usually work this way – usually I'm the one slumbering in blissful ignorance until noon, only to wake and find myself alone again. It never bothered me until Rufus, and then it would wreck me a little more each time.

But Cloud is still sleeping peacefully beside me, disentangled from my arms now, lying on his stomach with his hands tucked under his chin. By now I've worked out that this is his preferred sleeping position, and it's become enthralling in the past hour, much to my own resentment. I've been trying to keep my eyes focused up on the ceiling, to get myself set straight before we leave for the Temple, but my neck has a cramp from pulling back to look at him every five seconds.

My mind keeps returning to the northern island, though we'll be heading in the opposite direction at sunrise. It was the place we all retired to when we'd been respectively destroyed by Sephiroth – Rude, Elena and I went there after he attacked Tseng, and the Avalanche gang wasn't far behind after Aeris died.

We were holed up in a room in the Icicle Inn, waiting for them to arrive, sitting listlessly by a fire that Rude faithfully kept burning while Elena stared zombie-like into the flames and I drank myself into a stupor. I remember seeing Cloud first, after we realized they had arrived and it was time to resume our pointless game of tag with the environmentalist morons. It was before I knew that Aeris had been murdered, but even in my own demolished state I could see that something had happened. He was different, not the proud little pissant I'd been chasing after since that day in the church. He was walking ahead of Tifa through the snow, toward the house that had once belonged to Professor Gast. I saw him from a distance, but the hollow look on his face still gave me chills.

I wonder now, staring at him in the darkness, what it must have been like for him, for all of them. Both of our groups were staying in the same damn inn, of course – I remember passing Barrett in the hallway on the way to the ice machine; we had only nodded at each other with mutual disrespect. We were all licking our wounds, waiting until we could muster the strength to get back to our fruitless struggle with each other. It was like a silent truce, and it was Elena who actually broke it, railing at Cloud for having killed Tseng. For a moment I was ready to believe it, too – for a moment I wished I carried a gun, so that I could just finish off the little SOLDIER reject who'd become such a pain in my ass over the past months. But when he told us it was Sephiroth who had killed Tseng I believed him; I'm not sure why. Maybe because I would put nothing past Sephiroth, maybe because there was something so damn trustworthy about the punk.

I start to reach for him now, but stop myself when I see the first light through the bedroom window. I know it will be better to leave without waking him, and I tell myself I shouldn't feel guilty. I slide soundlessly off the bed and reach for my over-stuffed duffel bag, turning back to him one more time. He hasn't moved.

I start for the door, but when I turn the knob I hear him call out to me:

" Reno," he mumbles, his voice muffled by his pillow. I turn around, but he's still lying in place, and I tell myself that he's just talking in his sleep and quickly get on the other side of the door.

When I shut it behind me I let out my breath slowly, steadying myself. I can't bring him with me; I can't do anything with him. It's a bit distressing, since at the moment I feel like I can't breathe, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that there's a door between us, soon to become a continent.

When I look up I see Elena sitting at the kitchen table, her back perfectly straight, a neatly packed suitcase on the floor at her feet. She looks at me and smiles, and from her eyes it's clear that she hasn't slept.

" Ready to go?" she asks, standing quickly and reaching for her bag. I feel a dread in the pit of my stomach – if we don't find Tseng she might not recover again.

" Ready," I say, swallowing heavily.

We make our way down the stairs and meet Rude in the lobby, and I can't help but grin.

" Hey, look," I mutter. " It's the first time we've all been on time for something in the history of our careers."

" Tseng would be proud," Rude says, grinning.

" Where are we supposed to meet Reeve?" I ask, before we can get too sentimental. The Turks showing up on time is surreal enough.

" Out in the hanger on the edge of the city," Rude says, nodding toward the front doors of the complex. " Cid's meeting us outside with a buggy. He'll be flying us down there."

" Sweet," I say, grinning as we head toward the exit. " Now if only pansy-ass Reeve wasn't coming along, this would be a real party."  
" Reeve isn't so bad," Elena protests. " He's helping us get back to Tseng, isn't he?"

Rude and I exchange a look over her head. In Elena's mind we've already found Tseng. Part of me wants to bring her back down to earth, but I don't have the heart to say anything when we're only just leaving. Rude looks away and says nothing.

Cid is waiting for us outside in the buggy, smoking a cigarette and squinting into the light from the rising sun.

" How's it going?" I ask, slapping his hand and climbing into the front seat beside him, while Elena and Rude hop into the back.

" Fuckin' fantastic," Cid says, grinning and flicking his cigarette away. " I get to fly today."

" Are we taking the Highwind?" Elena asks, leaning forward.

" Hell yeah," Cid says as we drive off toward the outskirts of the ruined city. " S'been awhile since I been able to get any fuel for her, and now Reeve's giving me the old Shinra company reserves for this job." He laughs to himself. " Fuckin' ironic, ain't it?"

" What the hell isn't these days," I mutter to myself.

" Hey, how's Cloud?" he asks, punching my shoulder. " You were – lookin' after him, right?"

" Yeah," I mutter, my face burning. " He's alright. He's . . . alright. Yeah." I clear my throat gracelessly, keeping my eyes forward.

" Was he over last night?" Elena asks innocently. " I thought I heard him come in."

" What? No," I lie, wishing I wasn't so fucking mortified. If admitting to screwing around with suicide boy in front of Rude is going to be tough, doing it in front of Cid would be about ten times as humiliating.

" It's weird to think he's the one who beat Sephiroth," Rude says wistfully. " He was kind of a badass back in the day, but now . . . you know."

" It was Aeris dying," Cid says. " You shoulda seen him right after it happened. Tifa practically had to carry him . . .," He trails off, and I can see it's not exactly a memory he relishes revisiting himself.

" Yeah, give Cloud a break," Elena says, and I feel guilty for not sticking up for him myself. " I don't blame him for falling apart."

" So what kind of gas mileage does the Highwind get?" I blurt out, wanting to change the subject. Cid only laughs.

When we reach the hanger we climb out of the buggy and walk toward the Highwind, which is a majestic old beauty of a machine, even sitting on the ground. Cid admires her proudly as we approach, and I scan the ground for Reeve.

" Don't tell me he's late," I mutter, when we get there and no one is around.

" Let's leave without him," Rude says, snickering as we climb aboard, and I grin.

" Stop it, you two," Elena says. " He probably just got tied up. I think we're a little early, anyway."

Cid laughs.

" Sorry," he says, lighting another cigarette. " S'just funny. The Turks. Early." He laughs again.

" And anyway, we gotta wait for him. He's bringing the fuel on a truck."

" Didn't trust you with it, did he?" I ask.

" Aw, I don't know," Cid says, offering me the pack. " Reeve's an okay guy. Sometimes I think I liked him better as a big ass mog with a cat on it than a Shinra suit, though."

I take a cigarette and light it, and stand on the edge of the Highwind, thinking of Cloud. I wonder if he's woken up yet, wonder if he heard me leaving and just pretended to be asleep. Wonder what it felt like to stand on this ship and watch meteor burn up in the atmosphere, wonder if he was sorry that the world went on without her in it, and if a part of him still is.

I was in Kalm with the rest of the refugees when meteor came, watched it on TV like most people did. Elena, Rude and I were huddled around a tiny set in a bar, and just as the end of the world started to fizzle out in a sort of greenish supernova the station in Midgar went down and our reception got knocked out. There was a moment of silence, then, the crowd of strangers in the bar all packed together, waiting to see if the ground we stood on was going to break apart or hold. Me, I was trading sips of whiskey from a flask with Rude, figuring that if I was going to meet the apocalypse that day I might as well be in a forgiving mood.

" Where the hell is he?" I grumble to myself, after almost an hour has passed and we're still milling about the deck of the Highwind. Cid is messing with maps, patient and thoroughly entertained, but Elena and I are getting restless, pacing and looking at each other with concern and fury. Rude, meanwhile, is eating beef jerky and generally just enjoying his morning off of work.

" Is this some kind of joke?" Elena asks, starting to get uncharacteristically frantic. " Should one of us go back to town to see what's going on?"

Then I hear it on the edge of the hanger: the hoarse motor of another buggy. I look up and see it's one of the old Shinra-issue cars with a large cargo bay in the back, this one holding five huge fuel canisters.

" It's about fucking time," I mutter, squinting down at the approaching vehicle. But something's not right – I see Reeve sitting in the driver's seat, but there are two other people with in the car with him.

" Is that Tifa?" I hear Elena ask, and my heart drops through my stomach when I realize she's right, and that Cloud is sitting beside her.

" Tifa and Cloud?" Cid mutters. " Didn't realize they were coming along. Ah, well, there's plenty of room."

He starts to climb down the ladder to meet Reeve on the tarmac, and I'm frozen in place with rage. That fucking brat. I told him plain as day that he couldn't come with us, and he has the nerve not only to show up just to spite me, but to bring _Tifa _along?

" We could use a hand!" Reeve calls up, and Rude swallows his jerky and hurries back down to help them. Elena glances at me.

" Cloud's coming, huh?" she says cautiously.

" News to me," I grumble, standing in place and refusing to help them unload. He glances up at me as I watch him from the deck, giving me a pitiable sort of look.

" You're mad?" Elena asks, watching me.

" I couldn't give a fuck what he does," I say, the tone in my voice betraying my indifference.

When Cloud and the others board, Rude and Cid take the fuel below to fill up the tank. Reeve and Tifa glance nervously at Elena and I, and Cloud comes to stand beside me, but I walk purposefully away, glaring at Reeve.

" What the hell is this?" I ask, throwing my hands out. " Cid flying is one thing, but this is a Turk mission – we don't need the goddamn Avalanche contingent to babysit us."

" Turks, Avalanche – you're living in the past, Reno," Reeve says shortly. " We're all working together now for the betterment of the planet."

" Mother_fuck_, Reeve," I say, shaking my head at him. " _The betterment of the planet_? I cannot listen to your bullshit for a full week,"

" Reno, will you please calm down?" Tifa hisses.

" No!" I shout, trying to ignore Cloud's silent hovering. " Fuck the planet! This is about looking for Tseng."

" We want to help!" Tifa insists. " The more people who come along to scout the area, the better!"

" She's right," Elena says, laying a hand on my shoulder. " What's the big deal, Reno?"

" Forget it," I mumble, walking away from them and down toward the sleeping quarters of the ship, where we've all laid our bags on bunks to claim them. I hear footsteps behind me and I know without turning who has followed me down.

" What the fuck, man?" I snap, turning on my heel and glaring at Cloud, who reels backward a little. " You follow me when I tell you to leave me alone, and you drag Tifa along for moral support?"

" I wanted to come," he says, narrowing his eyes. " Believe it or not, not everything I do revolves around you. There are some . . . I'd like to visit the Temple again. Or what's left of it. I think I'm ready to try and get some closure, and it might help."

I'm at a loss for a moment, not even sure what he means.

" Plus, Tseng was the only Turk I liked," he adds, with a smartass little shrug. " I might as well try to help find him."

With that he walks coolly into one of the bunkers and shuts the door behind him.

" Well . . . screw you!" I shout lamely, turning around to make sure no one heard. I stand in the middle of the hallway for a moment, wanting to go after him but not sure what I want to do to him when I get there. So I turn and head back up to the deck, feeling the engines fire up beneath my feet. Above us the propellers have started turning, and Cid is at the helm punching dials and looking about as happy to be alive as I've ever seen him.

At least one of us will have a good time whether we find Tseng or not, I think, a little resentfully. Elena is watching him work with interest, and Rude is bothering Reeve about something. I scan the deck for Tifa and see her standing at the railing on the eastern side of the ship, watching the still-rising sun.

" What, you wouldn't let him come unless he brought you along with him?" I ask her sharply. She turns and frowns, then looks back to the sunrise.

" Leave me alone, Reno," she mutters.

" Not a chance," I say sweetly, leaning beside her. " You crashed my party, sister, so don't expect me to play by your little Reconstruction Prison rules. We're not in Midgar anymore."

It becomes true just as the words leave my mouth; the Highwind rises from the ground and we're off, picking up speed as we climb higher into the air. It feels good, the breeze on my face, and I have to admit, though I'm furious at his accompaniment, it feels good to know that Cloud is below deck, too.

" You're so melodramatic," Tifa says in a long sigh, and again I feel bested by an Avalanche do-gooder, unable to come up with any kind of retort.

It's sitting on the tip of my tongue, everything I could tell her about Cloud and I last night, as well as the fact that I'm pretty sure I know the real reason he came along, and it has nothing to do with some high-minded closure. But I might be wrong. And I might be losing my edge, because I actually can't bring myself to throw it in Tifa's face, even though part of me would be okay with physically throwing her overboard.

" Later, Tits McGee," I say, falling back on the time-tested boob jokes. She rolls her eyes and I push off the railing and walk across the ship, blinking into the strong wind that blows against me as we sail farther away from Midgar. I look over the western railing, watching the city get smaller and smaller as we ascend.

" Isn't this incredible?" Elena asks me in a giggle, falling against me as the wind blows her around the deck. I put an arm around her and grin down at Midgar as it disappears beneath us.

" I know you think I'm being naïve," she says suddenly, surprising me. " Or desperate. I don't care, Reno. I know he's alive. I just know we're going to find him," she shakes her head with a kind of determined tenacity, hugging my waist.

" I know you do, babe," is all I can think to say, putting a hand on top of her head. I wish I could believe her. I wish I had that kind of faith, in miracles, in anything.

* * *

Three hours later I'm below deck playing hearts with Rude when the Highwind shifts and I feel it begin to descend.

" We must be close," he says, looking up at me over his cards.

" Must be," I mutter, a resigned wariness rising through me.

We scurry up to the deck, where the afternoon sun has grown strong and bright, and off in the distance we can see the coast of the southern island. The air is denser here, balmy and slightly oppressive, even with the wind in our faces.

" Reno," Rude says, his voice quiet. " What if—"

" We'll find him," I say sternly, before he can finish. " Elena's sure."

I know he doesn't necessarily believe that I am, but at least it shuts him up. None of us has admitted out loud that it's possible that we're on a soul-crushing wild goose chase. I'm sure Elena didn't even pause for a moment to allow herself to consider it, but I know Rude and I have. That still doesn't mean I want to talk about it.

Rude walks over to pester to Cid, who has been cheerfully steering and chain smoking on deck all morning. Elena is standing at the helm of the ship, watching the island come closer. I know I should stay up here, keep my nose clean, but I can't help it. I turn and go back down to the sleeping quarters, and walk down the hall until I come to the room Cloud has shut himself up in for our entire voyage.

I don't bother knocking, and for a moment I consider the novelty of discovering him locked in an embrace with Tifa: would I flip out like Sephiroth and try to bring down the world? My heart falters a little when I peer inside, and I have to wonder.

Instead I find him lying on his back in one of the tiny bunks, looking at a map. He looks back over his shoulder at me and I give him a smirk and shut the door behind me.

" What do you want?" he asks, looking back to the map.

" We're about to land, thought I'd let you know," I say, walking around the tiny room, avoiding eye contact and trying to be charitable. I do feel a little bad about jumping all over him this morning. Kind of cute that he's following me around, really.

" Alright, thanks," he says, still studying the map.

" What are you looking at?" I ask, walking over to stand beside the bed." A map."

" No shit."

" It's a map of the area around the Temple," he says, letting out his breath.

" And you've just been staring at it for three hours?" I ask.

He looks up over the rim of the map and finally meets my eyes. There it is, like a kick to the stomach. Must be something in the mako glow, shooting out at me like radiation poisoning.

" I've been thinking," he mutters.

" That's novel."

" About Aeris, and the Ancients," he says, folding the map.

" What about em?"

" You wouldn't understand," he says, staring me down.

" Why'd you bring Tifa?" I ask, pissed off by that assumption.

" I didn't _bring _her," he says, folding his hands over his stomach. " She was with Reeve when I asked if I could come along, and she wanted to come, too."

" So she's following you around," I say, sitting on the bed. I can feel the ship dropping steadily now; we must be getting close to landing.

" I don't know," he says, sighing. " I don't mind having her here. She went through all of this with me, the first time."

" Well, I guess she can change your stupid bandages, then," I say, standing. " Since she's got such a deep understanding of your angst."

" Reno . . .,"

I don't want to hear it. _I _wouldn't understand? And she would? Who the hell has Tifa lost in all of this, outside of her main competition for direct access to Cloud's pants? Not that I didn't come along and screw that up for her, or so I thought. I charge out of the room, slam the door behind me and walk up to the deck, furious. On the stairs I run into Tifa, who is on her way down.

" Is Cloud still down there?" she asks.

" He's all yours," I grumble as I push around her. Up on deck Elena and Rude are already strapping on their packs, ready to disembark. Cid is putting the finishing touches on the landing, and when the ship sets down it bucks a little, tripping me as I'm making my way across the deck.

Because this day just couldn't get any fucking better.

" Reno!" Elena says, jogging over to help me up. " We're here!" She beams at me, and I muster up a grin for her.

" Let's go find our boss," I say, standing.

" I'll stay with the ship," Cid says as the three of us approach the ladder, ready to head into the jungle. " You all radio me if you need anything."

" Radios!" I say, slapping my forehead. " Almost forgot. Where are they?"

" I've got them," Reeve says, appearing suddenly behind me. I snarl inadvertently, having almost forgotten that this wasn't just a job for the terrific three.

" Reno, please relax," he says calmly, infuriating me further. He puts down the crate of radios he's carrying and takes one out, flips it on.

" These are the old Shinra radios," he explains, and behind him Tifa and Cloud emerge from below deck. I keep my eyes on Reeve, willing myself not to look at them.

" I programmed them for short-wave communication," Reeve continues, handing one out to each of us. " And I want you all to listen carefully, because they're still broadcasting off of the old Shinra station frequency. That transmission I was able to hear could come through again."

We all fiddle with our radios for a moment, nervous for varying reasons. I hoist a pack Elena has prepared for me on my back and groan under its weight.

" Tseng better give me a fucking raise for this," I mutter, trying to break the tension. Everyone stares at me unappreciatively.

" It was a joke!" I shout as they start to make their way down the ladder.

" Good luck, man," Cid says, slapping a pack of cigarettes into my hand.

" Thanks," I say, sliding them into my pocket and shaking his hand before turning to go.

I'm the last one to make it down from the Highwind, and when I get there Reeve is studying a map, everyone else looking to him as if waiting for him to lead. I scoff to myself, disgusted, and start to walk off in a random direction.

" Reno, where are you going?" he asks casually, still reading the map.

" To find Tseng," I return childishly, not slowing down.

" Wait!" Elena calls. " We're going in pairs."

I sigh and stop in my tracks. Only Elena could possibly give me orders right now; if she wants me to trek through the jungle with her, I can't say no.

" Tifa, I think you should come with me," Reeve is saying. " I – well, to be honest, I don't have much in the way of combat skills when I'm not using a robot to fight, and I might need your help."

Tifa opens her mouth to protest, but Reeve powers on, ignoring her.

" Rude and Elena, you two seem to work well together, so why don't you head toward the south. Tifa and I will go north."

Cloud and I look at each other.

" Cloud, I'll need you to watch out for Reno," Reeve says, and the words are barely out of his mouth before my fist is headed in his direction. Tifa steps in front of me before I can reach him, expertly deflecting my blow.

" You two can go east," Reeve says, not missing a beat. " And spot on, Tifa, I'll certainly be safe traveling with you." With that he finally gives me his shit-eating grin, and if Tifa wasn't standing between us with her black belt bullshit I'd have his head torn off by now.

" Watch out for me my fucking ass," I mutter to myself, fuming and storming off blindly toward a dense patch of trees. I feel a hand on the back of my t-shirt, and whirl around to glare at Cloud, who is staring at me with a humorless expression.

" That's south," he says, deadpan. " We're supposed to be going east."

" You're taking orders from that panty-waist now?" I snarl.

" Panty-waist?" he says, raising an eyebrow. " What are you, eight years old? What does that even mean?"

" We'll meet at the ruins of the Temple at sundown," Reeve is calling as he and Tifa head off in the other direction. Tifa looks longingly after Cloud and I as we disappear into the brush, and for a moment I'm almost thrilled. He moves ahead of me and I notice that his buster sword is strapped to his back.

" I thought you weren't fighting anymore," I call to him, hurrying ahead to catch up.

" I'm not," he says, looking back at me. " You'll have to take over if we run across any danger."

" Oh, right," I mutter.

" You seemed pretty insulted when Reeve suggested it might work the other way around."

" I can take care of myself," I tell him. " But you're not going to be sitting on your ass watching if I get into some shit."

" Noted."

He doesn't say anything after that, just works his way through the jungle, occasionally stopping to chop away dense foliage or check the map. I try not to notice the sheen of sweat on his forehead, which is not entirely unattractive, or the way the humidity has made his lips fat and pink.

" Need some water?" he asks when he sees me staring at them. I nod and he hands me a canteen, which I drink from greedily.

" What the hell is the plan, anyway?" I ask, wiping my mouth. " I feel like I should be screaming his name while we walk or something."

" We're looking for any sign of those little guys who used to live in the temple," he says, taking the canteen and drinking from it. His tongue darts out to catch a stray drop of water and my knees get a little weak. Somehow he's even better looking when I feel like pummeling him.

" Hey," he says, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. " I'm glad we got paired together."

" Hmph. Tifa wasn't. Did you see the look on her face?"

" Reeve likes her," he says plainly, and I wince.

" Gross."

Cloud frowns.

" What's your problem with Tifa?" he asks.

" You're so fucking dense," I mumble, walking ahead of him.

" What?"

" Nothing," I shout back. " I don't have time to drag out the master list of things I hate about your little girlfriend. We've got to find these little spiritual bastards. C'mon."

" She's not my--"

" Oh, shut up."

For the rest of the day we wander in silence, stopping only once to eat some jerky. We don't even look at each other; I'm still aggravated that he's here at all, distracting me when I'm supposed to be devoting my entire mental process to finding Tseng. Now I can't keep my mind off of bending him over every fallen tree we pass and showing him what Tifa could never give him. Or daydreaming about she and Reeve walking over a cliff, never to be seen in Midgar again. Heck, they don't even have to die: they could found their own little planet-worshipping civilization there at the bottom of the cliff, repopulating the island to their hearts' content for all I care, as long as I never have to lay eyes on either of them again.

We get back to the site where the Temple of the Ancients once stood before sunset, but the sky is already blazing in dark oranges, the last daylight quickly disappearing. Cloud comes to the edge of the crater that the Temple disappeared into and looks down, at a fallen rope bridge that hangs along the steep chasm.

" It was about a year ago today," he says absently, staring down into the darkness.

" Second worst day of my life," I mutter, pulling out the pack of cigarettes Cid gave me and offering it to him. To my great surprise, he takes one. I fish my lighter out of my pack and light mine and then his. We smoke, standing there for a while without talking. He coughs a little but I refrain from teasing him about it.

" The first was the day Rufus died, right?" he asks. My heart seizes up, in embarrassment that he's guessed correctly or grief at the reminder, I'm not sure.

" Where the fuck is everybody?" I grumble, refusing to answer.

Cloud clicks on his radio and we hear static.

" Tifa?" he says, speaking into it, and I feel like pushing him into the pit. Of course he'd ask for her first. Just to spite me. Fucker.

" We're almost there," she answers after a few seconds.

" Find anything?" he asks.

" No."

" Shit," I whisper, wondering where Elena and Rude are. Maybe they found him and got too excited, forgot to radio us. Maybe they're all yukking it up over the flask Rude has undoubtedly brought along, just waiting for me to push through the bushes and join them.

" You're worried?" Cloud asks quietly. I look up at the sky: the sun is nearly gone now, and a few dim stars are starting to appear.

" We should build a fire," I mumble, dropping my cigarette and stomping it out.

" Hey, don't," he says, putting his out against the bottom of his boot and stooping to pick up mine. " It's sacred," he tells me, slipping the butts into his pocket.

I only shake my head at him, hearing footsteps approaching from the north. I look up to see Tifa and Reeve walking toward us, looking tired and dejected.

" Oh," Reeve says when he arrives. " I thought you'd have a fire going by now."

I mutter a string of obscenities under my breath as I flip on my flashlight and go to look for useable wood. I wait for Cloud to follow me, but when I turn back he's talking with Tifa.

Fine. Great. Whatever.

I wander off into the woods, collecting firewood and cursing under my breath, tired of this whole operation already. I'm starting to get the feeling that's it's only going to bring us a shitload of unbearable disappointment, and possibly bring murder charges on my head, cause there's no way Reeve is going to survive another day if things keep going the way they are.

Hearing noises on the trail up ahead I pause, my heart rate increasing. I whirl around, but Cloud – my bodyguard, ha – is no where to be seen. I fumble in my pocket until I find my taser, wondering how effective it will be if some prehistoric-type nightmare bursts through the brush.

Instead I see the shine of the moon on a bald head: Rude. Elena is not far behind, tripping a little over the roots that cover the ground.

" Hey guys," I say when they come to the clearing where I'm standing with the wood I've collected. Rude gives me a little smile, and Elena tries for one herself, but eventually gives up.

" It was just one day," I say quickly. " It's a huge island, and we've got a whole week."

Elena walks to me without speaking and I drop the firewood, letting her pull me into a hug. Rude throws himself on us without hesitation, squeezing our shoulders until it hurts.

" S'okay, s'okay," I hear myself chanting as I pat their backs. " It was only one day."

* * *

At camp that night, Reeve cooks the best meal I've had since I left Kalm: bacon and baked beans. I sit between Elena and Rude and we all eat hungrily while Reeve mans the frying pan and Tifa and Cloud nibble at their dinners from the other side of the fire, taking bites only between whispers.

" What the hell are they talking about?" I mutter, unintentionally thinking out loud.

" I knew Reeve and those other bastards were holding out on us," Rude says, not hearing me. " Bacon? I thought it was all gone. And where are they getting the refrigeration power from?"

" I think Cid had all of this on the ship," Elena says. " Well, maybe not the bacon, but I know he gets power and hot water when the ship is running."

" Yeah, but the bacon!" Rude says, licking his fingers. " The bacon, Elena."

" Rude, let it lie."

" Hey, Reeve," he calls, ignoring her. " Where's this bacon from? You Reconstruction people hoarding working refrigerators or something?"

" Don't bite the hand that feeds you, Rude," Reeve returns evenly, looking back to the pan. " This is the last of the bacon I rationed for tonight. Do you want another piece, or do you want to ask obnoxious questions?"

Not surprisingly, Rude opts for seconds, and brings over another piece for Elena and I as well. We devour the last of the food in about two seconds flat, then wash it down with the contents of the flask that Rude, not surprisingly, brought out for the occasion.

When I'm finished with dinner, and tired of witnessing Cloud and Tifa's heartfelt conversation on the other side of the campfire, I get up and head toward one of the tents that Rude and Reeve set up earlier. There are two large tents, one for the former Turks and the other for the former Avalanche members. And Reeve says I'm the one living in the past. I'm just happy not to be in Cloud's tent, in any event, if we have to do this in pairs of three. There's no telling what I might do to him in the middle of the night, half-asleep and horny. I'm not even ready to admit that I can remotely stand him, let alone have an audience.

Still, after three straight nights of sleeping beside him, it feels pretty shitty to curl up in my sleeping bag alone. Elena comes in not long after me, but I don't feel like talking, and neither does she, so when I pretend to be asleep she pretends to buy it. Rude is the last one in, and I only half-notice his entrance, as I'm suffering through a restless sleep by then. He shakes my shoulder, certainly trying to wake up and drink with him, but I slap at him angrily and he gives up without much of a fight.

Pretty soon he's passed out, as evidenced by the rollicking snores that are resounding off the walls of the tent. I sit up in a huff and glare at him, but I know there's no waking him once he gets into snore-mode. I've thrown shoes at him, kicked him – hell, I think once, in a motel in Rocket Town, I threw an ottoman at him – it's all fruitless. I had grown used to it when we all traveled together, but now I've gotten accustomed to my own room, and to sound of Cloud's quiet breathing instead of this log-sawing symphony. I lie back down and stare at the roof of the tent, staring at the indistinct blur of the moon, which shines through the somewhat translucent material. There's no way I'm going to get any sleep in the coming week.

After a few hours of silent pouting, I get up and leave the tent, taking my smokes with me. Standing on the edge of camp, I light one and stare up at the sky. It's been a long time since I saw the stars this clear.

Bored, I wander around the camp, poking around Reeve's food supplies, which he has smartly locked up. I pick up one of the radios someone left by the now-dead fire and turn it on. The static is loud, and I turn down the volume and glance around the camp to see if I've woken anyone, but there isn't a stir in either of the tents.

" Tseng?" I whisper into the live radio. I hold it in my hand, listening to the static and waiting for a response. Nothing.

I have the inclination to pitch the radio into the jungle in fury, but instead I just set it back down and take another drag. I need a sign, I think, sitting down and watching the smoke I've exhaled float upward toward the stars.

I hear a zipper being pulled and look behind me to see someone coming out of the Avalanche tent. Much to my own disgust, I'm praying that it's him when I see his face peeking out at me.

Cloud steps out of the tent and zips it shut behind him, looks to me and puts his hands in his pockets, takes them out, shifts on his feet, and finally walks over to the crate of supplies I'm sitting on.

" I couldn't sleep," he says.

" Get a new line," I mutter, flicking ashes.

" Move over," he says, irritably, pushing me aside and sitting down next to me on the crate. It's small, forcing the not-unpleasant sensation of his bare arm resting along mine.

" Listen to that moron," I say, gesturing with my cigarette in the direction of my tent. Rude is still snoring like a madman, the sound echoing through the valley we're camped in.

" I used to have the same problem when I was traveling with Barrett," Cloud says, grinning a little. " Aeris and I would just stay up all night and laugh about it. I guess eventually we got used to it. We must have slept, at some point."

" So what woke you?" I ask, casting around for an inappropriate remark. " Are Tifa and Reeve humping in there?"

" No, some idiot turned on a radio."

" Fuck," I mutter, knowing it's too late to stop myself as I lean in toward him. He meets my kiss and grabs my knee clumsily, and I can't help but be amused and pleased by his eagerness to give in. Testing my upper hand, I bite his bottom lip as I'm pulling back.

" Ow," he complains, glaring at me.

" You're such a puss," I say, grinning and taking a drag.

" You taste like cigarettes."

" Imagine that." But I put it out a few seconds later, against the bottom of my shoe this time. When I look back to him he's smiling stupidly.

" Don't read anything into this," I say sourly, handing him the smashed cigarette butt, which he quickly deposits in his pants pocket. " I just need all the good karma I can get right now."

He kisses my cheek, my nose, the corner of my eye, and I lean in and take what I can get, trying to bite away my smile. I'm considering whisking him off into the jungle for a quickie, but there's something to this, too, surprisingly.

Suddenly I hear that zipper going again, and I shoot away from Cloud like a bullet, nearly knocking him off the crate as I jump up. We both turn to the Avalanche tent to see Tifa emerging.

" Right," I mutter to myself, my heart sinking. I can feel Cloud staring at me, but I don't look back. Tifa looks from him to me and sighs.

" Did he wake you up?" she asks, walking to Cloud and putting a hand on his shoulder.

" Oh, sure," I say, glaring at her. " Rude is snoring loud enough to wake the dead and I'm the one who woke him up?"

Cloud doesn't answer, only stands and walks away from her, and without even glancing back at me he unzips the tent and climbs back in. Tifa looks to me with suspicion.

" What did you do to him?" she asks, and I'm tempted to throw my head back and laugh; that question could be answered in so many delightfully evil ways.

" I was sitting here having a smoke and the little punk came out to bother me," I say, glad it's dark enough to hide my cheeks, which are growing hotter by the second.

" I wish you would quit messing with him," she says, narrowing her eyes as if she's trying to figure me out. " Or whatever it is you're doing."

" You worried he's got a little crush on me?" I ask, pretending to be amused by the idea.

" Oh, please," she says, looking away.

" It ain't impossible," I say, twisting the knife. " You oughta ask him about his old war buddy Sephiroth sometime."

Tifa turns to me slowly, and raises an eyebrow.

" Reno," she says carefully, stepping closer to me. " You don't think he told me first?"

My mouth falls open, but no responses come to mind. Sucker-punched: typical Tifa combat style. I think about throwing out a boob joke or two, but suddenly they seem rather pathetic.

" In fact I think I was the first one he ever talked to about Sephiroth," she says, nodding to herself. " It was after Aeris died. We went through a lot together, then," she adds meaningfully, giving me a wicked look.

I have to turn and walk away while I can still resist the urge to physically attack her. I hurry back into the tent, and when I get there, Elena is awake lying on her back and staring into space. She gives me a little wave as I walk in, and I nod to her and drop into my sleeping bag, punching it a few times for good measure, pretending that I'm breaking it in instead of imagining it's Tifa's smug face.

" You okay?" she asks. On the other side of her Rude snorts loudly, still fast asleep.

" I fucking hate Tifa!" I say in a hissed whisper, before I can stop myself.

" Wow," Elena says, after a moment of silence. " You really are in love with Cloud, aren't you?"

" In _love_?" I spit, shooting up in my sleeping bag and whirling to glare at her. " What are you _on_, Elena?"

" You know I'm not quite sure what it was that we were drinking from Rude's flask at dinner . . ." she says, trying to be cute.

" Fine, I hate you, too," I grumble, lying back down and rolling away from her.

" Oh, Reno," she says, sighing and reaching over to mess up my hair. " I think he's good for you."

" Leave me alone," I mumble, burying my face in my pillow.

* * *

In the morning I wake up with a headache, not having gotten much sleep. Elena is already out of the tent when I roll over, and Rude, goddamn him, is still snoring, though more quietly now.

" Rude!" I scream, and he twitches a bit before getting back to snoring. I pitch my pillow at him and it nails him right in the head, a direct hit, but he doesn't move.

Giving up on him, I grab my pack and head out of the tent. Outside Elena is helping Reeve cook breakfast, which looks far less appealing than last night's dinner: soggy oatmeal.

" This is all we've got?" I ask, making a face as I look down into the pot Reeve is stirring. " Want me to go kill a rabbit or something?"

" As if your aim is that good," Reeve says, snickering. I start for him but Elena catches my hand.

" Reeve, will you please quit baiting him?" she snaps.

" Sorry," he says, grinning and ducking out of the way as I swing at him with my other arm. " It's just too easy."

" Fuck you guys," I say, walking away. I stomp through the jungle aimlessly, not sure what kind of statement I'm making by missing breakfast and getting lost. But I'm getting a little tired of being the butt of everyone's jokes.

I hear voices as I'm walking, and my heart freezes for a moment, thinking of Tseng. I turn and head in their direction, my pulse increasing. I can't help but think about how great it would be to rub it in Reeve's face if I was the one who found Tseng, especially if I did it on my own. But I doubt the denizens of the Temple would be so close to camp, if we didn't see them yesterday . . .

I hear a waterfall, and follow the voices there, tearing palm fronds out of my way. Finally I reach a clearing with a lagoon, fed by a waterfall, but instead of a lost civilization harboring my former boss, I see a couple of kids frolicking near the water's edge.

It takes me a second to realize it's Cloud and Tifa. He's shirtless, watching her as she rubs soap over his arm. She's got the glow of victory all over her, and I don't have to wonder if the fact that her white tank is soaking wet helped her get the upper hand.

So much for that, I think, turning and walking blindly away from the clearing, nausea rising through me and making me dizzy as I go. I fall against a tree, and hold onto its rough trunk for balance, praying that I won't throw up. I'm not quite that pathetic, am I? And it's not like I didn't see this coming, right? Right?

" Hey!" Rude says, suddenly wide awake and walking toward me, pulling a t-shirt on over his head. He smiles, all rosy cheeked; motherfucker probably had the best sleep of his life last night.

" You alright?" he asks when he reaches me. I'm leaning on the tree, and when I look up I realize I've dug my fingernails into the bark and that a couple of my nail beds are bleeding.

" Thanks a lot for keeping me up last night, ass," I say, finding my voice and straightening a bit, though it hurts to move.

" What do you mean?" he asks, frowning.

" Your fucking – oh, never mind." I shake my head.

" Want some jerky?" he asks, watching me with concern. I take some, though I still feel like vomiting.

I was only joking about letting her change the bandages. Didn't he know that? Changing the bandages is my thing. Mine.

Rude is talking about the route he and Elena are going to take today, but I can't pay attention. I chew ferociously on the end of my jerky, not really eating it. My mind is screaming back and forth from rage at Tifa thinking she could possibly know how to take care of him, to trying to convince myself I don't care, that she can have him, fuck both of them and their precious history with each other.

" Reno?" I look up to Rude, but it's not him who's calling my name. Cloud has suddenly appeared behind him, dressed now, though the tips of his hair are wet.

" Are you guys heading out?" Rude asks, looking to me. I can't speak. Cloud shrugs.

" Sure," he says, " I'm ready."

" Alright," Rude says, slapping my shoulder. " Good luck today, fellas."

" Thanks," Cloud says uncertainly, keeping his eyes on me as Rude walks off. I can only imagine what my expression looks like.

We stand in silence for a moment; I can't take my eyes off his fresh bandages. She wrapped them wrong, too tight, I can tell.

" So, east," he says, raising an eyebrow. " This time we'll work our way down along that river we saw yesterday."

" Great," I say tightly, giving him a steely look. It's hard, with those mako eyes staring back at me, confused and – oh, fuck him. He deserves it.

Cloud starts to walk ahead of me, slashing at the brush with his buster sword, but stops after a few minutes and turns back.

" What the hell's the matter with you?" he blurts, the pitch of his voice almost convincing me that he actually gives a shit.

" Nothing," I say, putting on my best unconcerned face. " I just didn't get much sleep last night." My heart is thudding in my ears; I'm afraid he'll hear it from where he stands.

" Right," he says, turning back around. He stands still for a moment, as if considering pressing the issue, but then only walks on, beating harder at the foliage.

We walk until we find the river, and then head downward along its banks. I try not to think about him, try to think only of Tseng, my eyes scanning the dense green landscape for any signs of life outside of the occasional bird or frog. But there's nothing.

By noon I'm starting to feel lightheaded, and I cast around in my pocket for the jerky I was chewing on earlier, but I must have dropped it in surprise when I looked up and saw Cloud. I try to ignore my hunger and thirst for as long as I can, not wanting to deign to speak to him, but this doesn't last long. I've never been good at being stubborn, if it means going without something.

" Hey," I say, grabbing his shoulder roughly. He turns around to see me wiping at my forehead, which is soaked with sweat, and staggering a little on unsteady legs.

" Water," I manage to say weakly before I stumble toward him. He catches me easily and leads me over to a shady patch of trees about fifty feet from the river. I fall down heavily and he hands me the canteen.

" Maybe it's too hot, walking out there along the river," he says in a sigh, watching me gulp water. " Without any trees." He sits down beside me, waiting for me to pass the canteen. I have a mind to swallow every last drop and make him drink out of the filthy river, but I already feel like I'm going to throw up, so I push it reluctantly toward him.

He drinks while I fish around in my bag for jerky, but I must have eaten it all yesterday. When I look up he hands me an apple without speaking, and I can't help but start when I see it.

" An apple?" I mutter in disbelief, stroking it lovingly. I was never big on fruit before Midgar's apocalypse, but I haven't seen anything fresh like this in months.

" Tifa gave it to me this morning," he says, and I throw it back at him without hesitation.

" Ow!" he says, as it bounces off his chest. " What's your fucking problem?"

" Forget it," I mumble, looking away from him. " Wouldn't want to deprive you of one of Tifa's thoughtful presents."

" But I want you to have it," he says lamely, thrusting it toward me again. " You don't look so well."

" I'm fine!" I shout, insulted.

" Well, I was going to split it with you, anyway," he says, scooting closer. I want to move away, maybe I even try to, but I'm too weak. Or that's what I tell myself when he's close enough for me to breathe in, cutting up the apple with his pocket knife.

" I wasn't serious about the bandages," I mutter, feeling delirious now. I lean back against the tree we're sitting beneath and watch the apple's juice run down his fingers, wanting to lick it off.

" Stupid," he whispers. He takes a piece of apple and holds it up to my lips. I scowl at him for a moment before giving in and eating out of his hand.

" Who're you calling stupid?" I ask with a mouth full, feeling human again, maybe because of the sweet food, maybe because of my proximity to him.

" I don't think you realize what you're making me relive," he says quietly.

" Huh?" I ask, and he puts another piece of apple in my mouth to shut me up.

" He thought I was in love with her," he says, looking down at the fruit in his open hand.

" Sef-roff," I say thoughtfully, chewing.

" Yeah," he says, shrinking. " I should have told him. I was a coward. I was afraid I was wrong about him, that I was imagining things. But he changed after he saw me with Tifa. He wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't even stand near me."

I take another piece of apple and wait for him to continue, but he's silent and still, hunched over with the burden of his guilt.

" I didn't do anything," he says at last, his eyebrows creasing. " That's what I thought. Tifa – she came to me and – she came to _me_." He looks up at me.

" But I didn't tell him he was wrong. That was my sin, as Vincent would say."

He tries to laugh.

" You aren't eating any," I say idiotically, not sure how to respond. What the hell is he telling me, exactly?

" I'm not hungry," he mutters.

" Bullshit," I say, taking a piece of apple from his hand and shoving it against his lips. He gives me an aggravated look, but takes a bite. All it takes is the opening and closing of his mouth around the fruit and my midsection shifts happily, ready to forgive and forget.

I hold the second half of the apple up for him, waiting for him to chew and swallow, and he takes my cue, his tongue brushing the tips of my fingers as I slide it into his mouth. My sticky hands are itching to reach for him, but I only sit back against the tree trunk, waiting.

" She asked to do it, okay?" he says with a scoff, shaking his head at himself. He turns and looks at me.

" You can change them from now on, you petty son of a bitch."

He waits for my response, and I purse my lips, enjoying having the ball in my court for once. He's the only one who seems to offer it to me anymore.

" I thought you said I was the only one you ever told about Sephiroth," I say, not satisfied yet.

" What?"

" Tifa knew," I say, waiting to see how he'll field this one.

" I told you, you were the first person I _wanted _to tell," he says, sighing. " I _had _to tell Tifa, so she would understand what the hell was going on."

" Sure, pal."

" Please don't do this to me," he begs, surprising me. I search around for a clever retort, but he's looking at me desperately, and I feel too damn guilty to do anything but grab him and pull him to me.

" At least admit to me that you were totally checking out those hooters in the water this morning," I say, petting his hair as he lies against my chest. He laughs, shaking both of us.

" Yeah, yeah," he murmurs. " It's hard not to. I think Aeris even used to get mesmerized by them from time to time."

Well, shit. I didn't think the little sap had it in him, but now he's got me laughing harder than I have in a long time.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Cloud and I are the last ones back to camp that night, dragging our feet after a long day spent searching and finding nothing. I can see in the faces the others that none of them saw anything out in the jungle, either: Elena is sitting stiffly on a crate by the fire, her hands on her knees, and Rude is nearby, listlessly drawing shapes in the dirt with a stick. Tifa and Reeve are quietly heating up the evening's meal, and neither of them even seems to have the energy to make a crack about our tardiness. Tifa does smile brightly when she sees Cloud, and, much to my childish displeasure, he returns her smile and walks over to her.

" You're sunburned again," she says, tsking, and I watch them out of the corner of my eye as I walk over to Rude and Elena, making sure she doesn't try anything slick, like rubbing some friendly lotion on his burns.

Rude and Elena look up at me as I approach, and I suck in my breath and put my hands on my hips.

" Just two days," I say, feeling a crushing pressure in my chest as I speak. " Out of seven," I add lamely, when Rude only goes back to scratching at the ground with the stick and Elena nods sadly, her eyes unfocused.

Reeve cooks and Tifa serves, and I watch them work with only mild annoyance, thinking about what Cloud told me the night before, that Reeve has the hots for her. I watch Reeve for signs while they work, and he does seem to look at her with a kind of quiet respect. Tifa, meanwhile, is more interested in glowering at me as she hands me my bowl of soup.

" What's with the service here?" I ask, making a mock indignant face as I take the bowl. " I've been waiting for hours! And what kind of titty bar is this – your shirt is not nearly tight enough, miss."

" Would you like a fist in the face with that?" she asks sincerely, her eyes flashing.

" Wow, some attitude," I mutter, stirring my soup. " I'm afraid you won't be getting a tip, doll."

I feel someone smack me hard on the back of my head and I choke a little on my first sip of soup. Cloud sits down heavily beside me and I glare at him.

" Shut up and eat, Reno," he says, blowing on a spoonful of soup.

I have the inclination to pitch a fit, and then I realize that his sitting with me is probably some kind of grand gesture, and maybe I should let it go. Plus, I may have been a _bit _rude, not that she doesn't deserve every bit of it.

Not that picking on Tifa isn't a terrific way to keep my mind off the fact that Tseng is still gone, and that the hours we have left to look for him just keep slipping away.

Tifa gets a bowl for herself and sits, possessively, on the other side of Cloud. I'm irritated and amused, feeling as if I'm reliving a childhood I never had, fighting over a friend on the playground.

Reeve drags a crate over between the one Tifa has fallen onto and the log that Elena and Rude are sitting on, quietly eating their soup, and when he sets down beside her I look up to find myself on the Avalanche side of the camp. Disturbed, I glance at Cloud, wondering if there's some other way we could arrange things.

" Is there too much salt?" Reeve blurts, breaking the awkward silence that has fallen over all of us.

" It's fine, Reeve," Tifa says plainly.

I see Rude taking sips from his flask, and he catches my eye and gives me a confused look. I shrug and look down into my bowl, my cheeks heating.

Desperate for some conversation, my foot starts tapping anxiously as I search around for a topic that the six of us could actually talk about, but all that comes to mind are insults: _Tell Reeve the soup tastes like shit! Chastise Tifa for slurping!_ I'm afraid Cloud will clock me in the back of the head again if I take that route, so I keep my mouth shut, but my foot taps more quickly.

" So, who's up for skinny dipping after dinner?" I finally call out, looking around at each of them. Rude laughs and takes another long drink, but everyone else avoids eye contact with me.

" Shut up, Reno," Reeve finally mutters in response, and no one speaks for the rest of the meal.

When I'm done eating I linger near the fire, not wanting to leave Cloud. Of course, Tifa doesn't want to leave him, either, and Reeve doesn't seem keen on walking away from her anytime soon, so it's the four of us in an uncomfortable line of unspoken intentions, staring at the fire as it starts to die down. Elena is the first one to say goodnight, and Rude soon follows her, finally out of booze. He stumbles over and tosses the flask into my lap before heading over to the tent.

" Finished it without you," he slurs, and I know he's hopelessly lost, and hurt that I made him drink alone. I sigh to myself as he walks off, sniffing the empty flask and then tipping my head back to drink the very last drop, knowing that I should tell him about Cloud, and soon. Maybe I'll make Elena tell him. I laugh to myself at the thought: Elena lecturing Rude with kind condescension, like a mother telling her bewildered child about the birds and the bees. Rude understood Rufus and I because he knew us, and he saw it all happen day to day. I didn't have to explain it; I couldn't have if I tried. Everyone just knew, and rolled their eyes, and moved on. Rufus and I were a match, after all: both cynical and winningly ruthless, sex-crazed and decadent.

Compared to me and Cloud, Rufus and I made perfect sense. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, his hands tucked into his lap because he's cold, goosebumps rising on his arms. For a moment I consider pulling him to me, just to see the looks on Tifa and Reeve's faces, but the very thought of it makes my heart jerk in terror, and I keep my hands to myself. I can' t put my finger on it, but somehow coming clean about Cloud would make me weaker, whereas screwing around with Rufus had always made me feel strong, powerful, chosen. It doesn't make sense, when Cloud is the one who saved the world and Rufus only helped destroy it.

But Cloud didn't save the world on my terms. Rufus certainly destroyed it on mine; I just sat back and watched, amused and disinterested. As long as I was drinking martinis with him, looking down on the people he trampled from his high-rise apartment, I was okay with it. I was proud, even. To hell with who I'd been, where I'd come from: a Shinra had plucked me from the gray masses to stand at his side, and there was no where to go but up. Of course, in hindsight, I was less at Rufus's side than at his feet, though that was still preferable to being under them. If I'm ashamed of it now, not wanting to own up to wanting someone like Cloud is part of not wanting to admit that I was wrong.

He's making a lot of sense to me now, though, sitting next to me and still smelling of apples, close enough for me to see that the sun has brought out a spattering of little freckles underneath his eyes. He glances at me slyly, and I bite my lip, try not to laugh, and fail.

" What's so funny?" Tifa snaps, as if she was just waiting for me to slip up.

" Your face," I answer easily, and Cloud shoves me, but I can see him swallowing a grin as he does.

" God, Reno," she moans, leaning around Cloud to glare at me. " Has anything worthwhile ever come out of your mouth?"

I fall off the crate laughing now, thinking of how I might answer, honestly, that Cloud's dick has, at one point, come out of my mouth. I wonder if she'd consider that worthwhile enough. Something tells me she would.

" What the hell is wrong with you?" she asks, turning back to watch me convulsing on the ground in laughter. I ignore her and look to Cloud, who may be thinking along the same unsavory lines as I, as he's looking at me with annoyance, his cheeks bright in the last light of the fire.

" Reno's got so much alcohol stored up in his system that he doesn't actually need to consume more to get drunk," Reeve theorizes, watching me with curiosity.

" Yeah, that must be it, Reeve," I say, staring up at the stars, still chuckling to myself.

Cloud says nothing, but watches me with interest for a few moments before offering me a hand. I take it and lock eyes with him as he's pulling me up, and he gives me a look that asks me to behave. It actually reminds me a little of the cold stare Rufus used to shut me up when matters of importance were being discussed. I sit beside Cloud on the crate again, taking my time in letting go of his hot hand.

" Thank you, sir," I say to him, having a private joke with myself. He doesn't get it, but pats me quickly on the back, a gesture none of us expected. Tifa looks away and Reeve frowns.

" When did you two become such good friends, anyway?" he asks, and I can feel Tifa and Cloud stiffen in unison, neither of them entirely comfortable with the subject. Insulted, I pretend that I am.

" Oh, it must have been when you stuck us together on this little expedition, Reeve," I say sarcastically. " He's just so damn good at protecting poor little me, after all," I add with venom, throwing an arm around Cloud's shoulders for effect. I'm not entirely sure who I'm trying to irritate anymore, but it surprises me when he quickly shakes me off and stands.

" Reno saved my life," he says, looking to Tifa and Reeve, and shifting his eyes to mine only for the briefest of seconds. " Remember?"

" Right," Reeve says slowly, looking confused. Tifa seems pleased with herself as Cloud gives us all a little wave goodnight and heads for their tent.

The breeze through the valley feels colder when he's gone, and I realize with hypocritical anger that he might not be too eager for everyone to find out about the two of us, either. To his friends I'm the scum of the earth, the worst and least remorseful of the Turks. I glance at Tifa and Reeve, and maybe I'm imagining things, but they both seem to be awaiting some kind of response.

" Fucking Rude," I curse, hearing him snoring in the background.

" Reminds me of Barrett," Tifa says.

" Oh yeah," Reeve says with a forced laugh. " I remember his snoring. Of course I wasn't really there, and used to put the Cait Sith robot in hibernation mode so that I could leave the controls and get some sleep myself . . .," he trails off when he notices that Tifa and I aren't paying attention to him.

" Well, it's been fun," I say sourly, standing and stalking over to the Turk tent, where I know I'll get no rest. When I climb inside I find Elena curled up in imitation of sleep, and Rude on his back, snoring away. I fall into my sleeping bag with a sigh, lying on my side and feeling frustrated in every possible way. All I got out of Cloud this afternoon were a few sticky kisses before I guiltily insisted that we should keep our eyes out for Tseng while we had the light, and he agreed. I couldn't help but think of Tseng's face when I had screwed up missions because of chasing tail, usually Rufus's.

Now that we've lost the light Cloud is even farther from me, twenty feet away but in the clutches of Tifa and burdened by both of our egos. I whimper pathetically as Rude honks out a concerto across the tent, and briefly consider jerking off before I decide it would be too disrespectful to Elena. If it was just Rude here I wouldn't think twice; hell, if it were just him I could bring Cloud over for a fuck and not get caught. But I know she's awake, and even if she wasn't, I'd feel like an ass.

So I lie still, forlorn and trying to fight off the sad beginnings of a hard-on as my mind inadvertently wanders to memories of Cloud walking ahead of me along the river earlier today, his skin flushed and his eyes going back to me every now and again, looking for my reassuring smirk.

I can't help but wonder what all of this really means to him. I haven't seen him actively searching the closure he claims he wants; he's only been looking for Tseng. I consider, in a dark moment, the possibility that finding out Tseng really _is_ dead might be a kind of closure for Cloud. It would be justice in tragedy; if we regain our friend it would only make his own loss so much more starkly unfair.

I have to brush the thought away, shuddering a little. Cloud's not like that. He's too good, right? He's too damn _good_, which is maybe why I want him around, and definitely why he doesn't fit.

* * *

Our third day in the jungle is not so different from our second, aside from the fact that I'm up early and waiting at the lagoon to change Cloud's bandages. He shows up like I knew he would, toting the first aid kit and a small plastic bottle of juice.

" Look at this hack job," I mutter as I'm unwinding the work Tifa did the day before. He doesn't say anything as I redress his wounds, still swaying a little, half-asleep. When I'm done he offers me the juice and I finish half of it in one swallow and then fall onto him, only allowing myself to mash him down into the soggy moss that surrounds the lagoon for a few minutes before jerking upright.

" We'd better get started," I say in a breathless rush as the fog over the jungle begins to lift, the first sunlight peeking through. He nods listlessly, his eyes hooded and his t-shirt twisted and muddy from my assault.

I help him up and he follows me sleepily back to the camp, where we put away the kit, strap on our packs and equip our weapons. Rude is still asleep but Elena is pacing around the clearing restlessly, tapping a radio against her palm.

" Want me to try and wake Rude for you?" I ask, walking to her.

" That's alright," she says, a distant look in her eyes. I start to turn away, but

she takes my arm and looks at me with frightening sincerity.

" I dreamed last night that we found him."

I don't know what to say; my mouth opens and then closes. Behind us Cloud fiddles with the pockets on his pack, pretending not to listen.

" It felt so real," she says lightly, and for the first time I hear the slightest hint of doubt her voice. It nearly breaks me in half.

* * *

Cloud and I cross the river in the morning and head northeast until mid-afternoon. We stop only once to eat jerky and drink water. He slumps against me when he finishes eating, exhausted.

" What's the matter with you, slick?" I ask, turning to him as he yawns onto my shoulder.

" I can't sleep," he murmurs, and though he stops himself before saying it, I can hear the 'without you' he leaves off. I sit back and let him fall into my lap, his head on my thigh and his eyes shut against the sun that comes down through the trees in dappled patches.

" Just a few minutes," I say sternly, laying an arm over his side and keeping my eyes open as he rests. It's hard not to let the rhythm of his breathing lull me to sleep, but I fight my own weariness, blinking into the distant jungle. It seems to move subtly as I watch it, with the flicker of birds and the wind through the leaves. For awhile, sitting there with Cloud draped over me in a thin sleep, it feels like we're the only two people left on the planet.

After rousing him we stumble on, going deeper into the woods for another hour before we have to turn back for the Temple, wanting to make it there before dark. The only thing we found all day was a patch of delicious looking berries growing around a collection of boulders about a hundred feet from the river. Cloud wouldn't let me eat them.

" They're probably poison, Reno," he said, jerking me backward when I went for them with mad excitement.

" It's nice to see something that isn't green for a change," I said, reaching for them deliriously.

" Don't make me draw my sword," he snapped with rising alarm, but I only wanted to touch them. And then I was squeezing them in my fists until red juice ran over my hands like blood.

" He's not here. There's nothing here," I said, my eyes blurring as the berries I crushed dripped to the ground.

" You don't know that."

He took me back to the river and carefully washed my hands clean. I watched the color float sadly away.

" They were so ripe," I mumbled. " I should have eaten them."

We're the first ones back to camp at sunset, but Tifa and Reeve come through the trees soon afterward. He's limping a little and leaning on her for support.

" What happened?" Cloud asks, jumping up from the fire he was working on starting.

" He twisted his ankle," Tifa says, helping him to sit.

" Did you—"

" No," she says shortly, before he can finish. " We didn't find anything."

I sit motionless by the fire while Tifa looks more closely at Reeve's ankle. He's quiet, and I can see the beginnings of guilt on his face; if we don't find Tseng it will all be on his shoulders. As much as I want to hate him for it, I only feel sorry for him, and grateful that he gave us at least a few days of renewed hope.

Cautious as that hope may have been, even mine wasn't cautious enough.

Elena and Rude come back to camp an hour late, and she immediately goes into the tent. Worry grows through me like cold crystals, pricking my insides sharply as a stone-faced Rude makes his way over to where I'm sitting.

" I couldn't get her to come back," he says, his voice a little ragged. " I almost had to pick her up and throw her over my shoulder."

" Will she eat something?" I ask, though I know the answer. He shakes his head.

I suck in my breath, knowing I should go talk to her. But I don't have a comforting thought in my head at the moment, and I need to gather my energy before I can hope to face her disappointment and not be wrecked myself. I look up at Cloud, who has taken over the cooking duties as Tifa quietly tends to Reeve. Tonight's meal is rice, plain and white, and he brings Rude and I each a small bowl of it before taking one for himself and coming to sit beside me.

" Maybe we should move camp," Reeve says weakly, but none of us has the presence of mind to consider the practicality of the suggestion at the moment. I hurry to finish my rice and refill the bowl, then turn back and walk to Cloud.

" Night," I say, reaching out to mess up his hair before slapping Rude's shoulder on the way toward the tent. I can feel all four of them staring at me with surprise as I go, but I can't be made to care. I climb into our tent, which Elena has left unzipped, to find her sitting rigidly on top of her sleeping bag, her knees pulled up to her chest.

" I'm fine," she says tightly, before I can speak.

" I know you are, babe," I say, trying to keep my tone light. " I just brought you some dinner."

" I'm not hungry," she says, when I offer my spoon and the refilled bowl.

" Super," I say, falling to sit beside her. " More delicious rice for me."

She watches at me with distaste as I chew spoonfuls of rice with my mouth open, staring at her as I eat.

" Mmmm," I intone dramatically, my cheeks full.

" If I eat some, will you stop that?"

I thrust the bowl at her and she takes it with a resigned sigh, stirring it a bit before taking a bite.

" Rude is so lazy," she says, after eating in silence for a few minutes. " I found a new trail and he insisted on coming back here just because it was dark."

" It's not safe in the dark," I tell her, knowing she doesn't care.

" We have flashlights," she snaps.

" Elena."

" No!" she says, smashing the bowl down into her lap, a few grains of rice flying out onto her sleeping bag. " It's not enough, Reno, we're wasting time! We could be doing more – Reeve is so disorganized –"

" If we're meant to find him, we'll find him," I say dully. It's a sentiment my father used to cling to: what's meant to be will come to you in time, and there's nothing you can do to change it. My mother walked out on that sentiment as soon as she'd saved up enough gil. My father sat back, drank, bided his time and died young, though still long after I'd walked out on him, too.

" You don't believe in fate," she mutters, ruefully picking up the stray pieces of rice and dropping them back into the bowl.

" How do you know?"

" Because you think Rufus was your fault," she says, not daring to look me in the eye.

By 'Rufus' she means his death, of course. And she's right on both counts.

" He wasn't," she adds quickly.

" Rufus was his own tragedy," I tell her, with phony finality. " He didn't need any help. He was always going to crash and burn."

It hurts to say it aloud; maybe I am turning into my father, some kind of fatalist. I crawl over to my own sleeping bag and fall down on it with a defeated thud.

" Then why'd you bother?" Elena asks quietly, after some time has passed. I can hear the click of her spoon against the wooden bowl, nervously tapping.

" Quit playing with your food," I grumble, avoiding the question.

Why did I bother?

Because I knew I was going to crash and burn, too, and I wanted some good looking company.

* * *

On the fourth night, we don't bother to ask each other if we found anything during the day's expedition. We trickle back to camp in our somber pairs at dusk, gathering wordlessly around the fire as Tifa cooks dinner: rice again.

There's thunder rumbling softly in the distance as we eat, and for awhile it's a welcome change: the stronger winds, the flashing sky. But soon the winds get so strong that we have to start scrambling to tie our supplies down so that they don't blow away.

" Get the food into the tents!" Reeve is shouting over the growing noise of the howling wind and the steadily approaching thunder. Cloud and I trip over each other as we rush to heave the last bags of rice over our shoulders, and I follow him into the Avalanche tent to dump them there.

" Think it will hold?" he asks me when we're inside, and we both look up at the roof of the tent, which is straining hard against the wind.

" Couldn't say," I mutter, stepping closer to him as a crack of lightening splits the sky outside, so bright we can see it through the tent. I think of Rufus and his fear of storms, the two of us hiding safely in his bed in Shinra Tower. I can almost understand his hysteria now that I'm outside, with only a flimsy tent between me and the eye of the storm.

Tifa pushes into the tent, breathing heavily and dropping three packs onto the floor. She looks up at us as she regains her composure, pushing a wet strand of dark brown hair off of her forehead.

" It's started raining," she says blankly, and just as the words leave her mouth we hear it begin to pound on the roof of the tent.

" Shit," I mutter, looking to Cloud. " I'd better get back."

" Right," he says, watching me searchingly, as if trying to figure out which Tifa-shocking move I'll put on him this evening. But I don't have time to come up with anything, so I only smack his shoulder on my way out.

Outside the rain is pouring, mud puddles already starting to form all over the clearing. Reeve is limping through the downpour, struggling with a large crate. I go to him and take it out of his hands, hoisting it onto my shoulder with a grunt and pulling him up with my other arm. He leans on me and together we hobble back toward the Avalanche tent.

" The radios are in there!" he screams over the storm. I open the tent flap and throw them inside, and hold it open for him while Tifa helps him climb in.

" You're welcome," I say, giving him a smug look before turning to go. I trudge back through the mud toward the Turk tent, which is being beaten by the heavy winds that are blowing me in its direction, though the roof seems to be fairing a little better than Avalanche's, as it's partially under a grove of overhanging trees.

I dive inside and find Elena and Rude huddled in the middle. I see relief cross their faces when I enter, and Elena pulls me to them, squeezing my arm.

" This is kind of fucked up!" Rude shouts over the noise of the storm, and I can't help but laugh. Elena rolls her eyes, but can't hide her grin as she takes up one of the blankets and roughly dries my hair with it. When she's done she tosses it aside and pulls another one around my wet shoulders.

" I hope this doesn't last long," she says, looking up at the roof of the tent with concern. There's a crack of thunder outside, and Rude jumps a little.

" Hey," he says, poking my shoulder. " Remember that one time in the mountains in Wutai?"

" Oh yeah," I say, smiling at the memory. " That was one motherfucker of a storm."

" It was the first time I saw Tseng get really drunk," Rude says, giggling. Elena perks up and raises an eyebrow.

" Tseng got drunk?" she says. " That's hard to believe. He could always hold his liquor."

" Not when he was trapped in a cave for six hours with nothing to do except drink with me and Rude," I tell her, snickering.

" Reno had just bought this big crate of sake, see," Rude explains, sitting up on his knees a little in excitement.

" Wutai has the best sake," I mutter, pulling the blankets closer around me. " I used to get a case every time we were there on business."

" We were on our way to our plane when this crazy thunderstorm suddenly rolls in," Rude tells Elena, holding out his hands for emphasis. " I mean, lightening and wind like you wouldn't believe –"

" Kind of like this," I say with a laugh.

" Yeah, kind of like this!" Rude agrees enthusiastically. " Anyway, so we run into this cave, right? And Reno's got the sake, cause he was bringing it on the plane—"

" I think she figured that part out, Rude."

Elena and I grin at each other as he doubles over laughing at his own punchline, prematurely.

" And Reno," he says, guffawing and wiping at his eyes. " Reno breaks out the sake, right, cause this storm is lasting forever and we're bored as hell."

" Tseng got so wasted," I say, shaking my head.

" He started waxing all romantic about Wutai and shit," Rude says, gasping for breath between laughs. " Like, about the good old days."

" _When Lord Godo commanded the respect of nations_!" he and I shout in unison, falling back and cracking up as we remember one of the infamous quotes that we used to give him hell for.

" Lord fucking Godo, man," Rude says, still on his back, shaking with laughter, crying a little. I tell myself it's only because he's laughing so hard, and the smile never leaves his face, but part of me wonders. Elena watches us with a placid grin, her hands folded in her lap.

" I wish I could have been there," she says quietly.

Suddenly we hear a splash and a shriek from the other side of the camp, and Rude and I sit up and look at each other with surprise. Outside it sounds like a pack of cats are trying to escape from a soggy vinyl bag, and by the time Tifa pulls open the zipper on the door of our tent I've guessed what happened.

" Our tent collapsed," she confirms, falling clumsily inside. She's soaked and covered in mud, and so are Cloud and Reeve, who follow her in, Cloud helping him to stand.

" His ankle's getting worse," Tifa says, taking Reeve from Cloud and inadvertently yanking him into her lap as she slips on my sleeping bag and falls backward.

" Oh, great, make yourself at home on my sleeping bag," I say, watching as she and Reeve scramble apart, covering it in muddy footprints.

Cloud zips up the tent door behind him, and outside the storm only seems to get stronger. We can hear tree branches being ripped away, and a few of them batter the sides of our tent, causing the six of us to gather nervously in the middle. Cloud crouches near me as we wait in silence, all of us praying that this tent will hold. His right cheek is smeared with mud, and I reach up without thinking and brush it away with the corner of the blanket I'm holding. I expect him to flinch, but he only gives me a weary smile.

" If we die tonight it will be my fault," Reeve blurts suddenly, and we all turn to him. " I've killed us," he laments, putting his face in his hands.

" Stop, Reeve," Tifa says, putting a hand on his shoulder. " Calm down."

" I just wanted so badly to . . .," He trails off, and swallows heavily.

" Give someone some good news," he finishes more quietly, sinking down in Tifa's grip. We all stare at him for awhile, maybe waiting for more, maybe too scared to look away, at the tent that's about to blow off and leave us stranded, or at the expressions on each other's faces in response to Reeve's admission.

Time passes, and we listen as the storm remains strong but stops gaining momentum. Rain batters the tent, but after awhile it seems like it's not going anywhere, and I let out my breath in relief, unwilling to think about anything else for the moment.

Cloud is shivering beside me, his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms covered with goosebumps. Unable to come up with a reason not to, considering the present circumstances, I take the blanket Elena gave me and wrap it around him, rubbing my hand in circles on his back to warm him up. He only sniffles in response.

" Um, here," Elena says, pretending not to be stunned as she lifts another blanket and brings it over to Reeve. Tifa pulls it around him and flips my sleeping bag over, brushing off the clean side.

" C'mere," she says softly, bringing Reeve over and gently guiding him down onto it. He lets out a choppy breath and Tifa pushes his wet hair off of his forehead.

" We're going to be fine," she says, looking down at him. " You did a good thing, Reeve. This isn't over. Tseng deserves this, whether he's actually out there or not."

I can feel Elena start to cry, even though she keeps it too quiet to actually hear. She lays down on her own sleeping bag, and Rude watches her uncertainly for a moment before patting her shoulder. She only buries her face in her pillow, and I can't help feeling like Tifa is wrong. This _is_ over. This is it. This is the end of the line; the storm is a sign and we all feel it.

Cloud lies down near the door of the tent, the blanket draped over him. Rude crawls over to his sleeping bag and Tifa settles in between Reeve and Elena. I look at Cloud and he's watching me, waiting. I scoot down beside him, lying on my back.

The storm rumbles away outside but the rain continues, falling softly but insistently against the tent as we all begin to drift into restless sleep. When everyone is still Cloud pulls at the blanket, offering me half, and I take it, turning to him.

" You don't say much," I whisper. " When everyone else is around."

He shrugs a little, and finds my hand under the blanket. His is warm, and still a little moist.

" You usually do enough talking for both of us," he finally mumbles, shutting his eyes and smiling to himself.

* * *

I wake up feeling hungover, and when I start to sit up I wince as pain shoots from my neck down to my right shoulder and upper back. Looking around the tent, I remember where I am slowly, and glance down at Cloud, who is still asleep. In fact, everyone is still asleep, though the sun has been up for a few hours by the looks of the light outside.

Or at least it seems that way – when I sit up, groaning at the cramp in my neck, Tifa raises her head, propping herself up on her elbows. I shove the blanket I was sharing with Cloud away awkwardly, but from the look she's giving me I can see that it doesn't matter. She might be one of the top contenders for most obnoxious nag on the planet, but she's not stupid. She sits up fully and looks at the two of us for a moment, pursing her lips. I reach back and try to rub out a knot on my shoulder, waiting dispassionately for the tirade.

" We should make breakfast," she says listlessly instead.

" Right," I mumble cautiously, wincing as I stand.

" Are you alright?" she asks, getting up and stretching her hands over her head.

" I slept on the fucking ground," I say, nodding to Reeve, who is still lying on my sleeping bag. " My back's been in better shape."

Tifa narrows her eyes, but then she looks to Reeve, her expression softening, and I have to wonder if she didn't stop herself from making a joke about the regularity of my sleeping in the gutter.

" Dammit," she whispers, kneeling down to him. She touches his ankle lightly, and I walk over and see what she's so upset about. The bottom of his left leg is swollen, and the skin around the injury looks greenish.

" He needs a doctor," I mutter gravely, and Tifa puts a hand to his forehead.

" Feels a little feverish," she murmurs, pressing the back of her hand against his cheek.

" Maybe we should just leave today," I hear myself saying, and then my head jerks in Elena's direction, making sure she's not awake. But I can't tell; she's got her sleeping bag pulled up over her head, and I can only see the ends of her short blonde hair poking out of the top.

" Shhh," Tifa hisses, standing and grabbing my arm, pulling me toward the door of the tent. I follow her out, both of us stepping carefully over Cloud as we go.

When we get outside we find the camp more or less destroyed by the storm. We might have predicted as much, but the sight of the other tent sunken into the mud and the remains of our fire from the night before completely blown away is still disheartening. Tifa stands in the middle of the muck for a few moments, and from the rise and fall of her shoulders I can see that she's trying to tamper down a panic attack.

" The radios," she mutters, going to the ruined Avalanche tent. She picks up the soaked and muddy fabric, pulling through it until she comes to the crate that I helped Reeve bring in the night before. I go to her and help her hoist it out from the wreckage, and we set it down in the center of camp, where the ground has begun to dry a bit under the day's muggy sunlight. Tifa pulls the top off and we both let out our breath in relief when we see that the radios inside are dry. She takes one out and flips it on.

" Hello? Anyone there?"

We immediately hear Cid's voice barking on the channel, and Tifa presses the speaker button and answers.

" We're here."

" Shit!" he exclaims. " I've been trying to get in touch with ya'll all night. Got so worried I nearly left my ship."

Tifa rolls her eyes.

" Sorry," she says. " We had to lock up the radios to keep them out of the rain. Everyone's okay. Well, almost."

" What'dya mean almost?" he asks.

" Reeve's hurt," she answers. " I think I'm going to have Rude bring him to you when he wakes up. His ankle's pretty busted up and I'm worried it's getting worse."

" Don't know what I'll be able to do for him, but alright."  
" Just keep him comfortable," she says. " We may have to leave a little earlier than we planned if he gets much worse," she adds, glancing at me.

" So I guess you haven't found anything?" he asks after a pause.

" No," Tifa answers shortly, flipping the radio off. She puts it back in the box with the others and brings a hand to her forehead, chipping at the mud that has dried there.

" So what's for breakfast?" I mutter, looking around for any sign of food supplies that survived the storm. All I can see are the bags of rice Cloud and I carried into the Avalanche tent, which have both split open, the rice lying puffy, brown and waterlogged all over the remains of the tent.

" The food's gone," she mutters absently, no hint of concern in her voice. She's got her hands folded over her chest and she's rubbing at her elbows, her brow knit as if she's deep in thought.

" Terrific!" I shout, throwing my hands out and looking up at the sky with vaguely directed disdain.

" Are you going to flip out?" she asks me sharply, and I look back to her, frowning.

" Nah, I think I have some jerky in my bag," I mutter. " I've gone a few days without food before. As long as we can get water—"

" I mean about Tseng," she says, the skin around her mouth going tight. " If we don't find him," she clarifies more quietly.

I open my mouth and narrow my eyes, but all I can do is raise my shoulders in half-assed offense. The answer is yes; maybe I don't want to admit it out loud.

" Because you can't," she says seriously, stepping closer to me.

" What do you—"

" I haven't seen him acting like this since she was alive," she admits in a rush, her eyes dropping back to the muddy ground.

" Cloud?"

" He's happy," she murmurs, not looking at me. " I think."

" Well, I'm glad someone is," I mutter after a few moments of stunned silence.

" You can't freak out on him, you hear me?" she hisses, blinking a rising dampness from her eyes. " No matter what happens when we leave here. He's not strong enough to take care of you if you lose it, and God knows what reverting to the way he was before would do to him."

" The way he was before what?" I ask smugly, after a careful pause.

" You're not telling me anything new, Reno," she says harshly, glaring at me. " It wasn't like I thought we . . .," she trails off, pushes her heavy hair over her shoulders. " I just want him to happy," she tells me, looking down at her fidgety hands.

" He's not as fragile as you think he is," I say, walking around her, kicking at a box that's been submerged in the mud, and bending down to yank it out.

" You can think whatever you want," she says, taking the box out of my hands and pulling the lid off to reveal two dented but still intact cans of soup. " But I've known him a lot longer than you have. Please just – consider what I've said."

I don't answer her, only take one of the cans of soup and hold it up to her face. She raises an eyebrow, looking at it and then at me.

" All the food's gone, huh?" I say, cocking my head. She snatches it back from me, and takes it and the other remaining can with her to the tent.

I stand and watch her climb inside, and looking around the ruined camp I can't help but feel hope climbing back through me like a second wind. She doesn't know everything. None of us do. You just never fucking know.

* * *

Rude heads back toward the Highwind with Reeve around noon, and the rest of us prepare to head out for what might be our last day in the jungle. Even if we ration one can of soup for tonight and the other for tomorrow, it doesn't seem like Reeve is going to hold out much longer without some medical attention. He's disoriented as Rude drags away from the camp, his head lolling about on his shoulders and his eyes rolling feverishly.

" Make sure you stop and give him water every thirty minutes or so," Tifa is calling, barking directions after Rude as they go. " And radio us if you need help!"

She stands and watches them warily as Rude's back disappears into the green brush, which seems only thicker and stronger since the rainstorm last night. I know she'd rather trust anyone else with ailing Reeve, but Rude is physically the strongest of all of us, and from the looks of things he'll probably be carrying Reeve completely before too long.

" Don't worry," Cloud says, going to her and patting her back. She gives him a half-smile and walks to Elena, who is lacing up her boots by the area that used to surround our campfire.

" I guess we'll be together today," she says, and Elena nods.

" I found a new trail yesterday," she tells Tifa, her voice a little hollow and strained, but still determined.

" Let's head in that direction, then," Tifa says, looking back at Cloud and I.

" Go and change his bandages," she says to me with sad resignation, nodding down at his arms, which are still caked with mud in places.

" Right-o," I say dryly, waiting for them to leave. Elena takes off with a little wave, an insuppressible bounce in her step, and Tifa follows, glancing back at us over her shoulder, as if she wants to get one last look at the ghost she's finally giving up.

" Good luck," Cloud calls after them, seemingly oblivious.

" She thinks you're such an invalid," I mutter, watching them go at last.

" Well, I can't change them on my own," he says defensively, and I only grab him and draw him to me, kissing him sloppily on the forehead. He doesn't know what I mean, really, and I decide not to tell him about Tifa's little speech to me earlier. I'm not entirely sure she's wrong, for one thing. I'm not sure how much control I'll have over my own potential flip out, either, but I don't want to abandon him, or lean on him, if I can help it.

We make our way over to the lagoon with the first aid kit, and the waterfall is pounding harder than it was before, the water foggier from the rain. I pull off my shirt and step out of my pants, and Cloud watches me as he fumbles with the muddy gauze on his arms.

" Changing my bandages doesn't usually require you to be naked," he remarks dryly as I fling my underwear aside and dive into the lagoon. The water is cold, stunning me for a moment, but by the time I break the surface, gasping for air, it's starting to feel pretty good on my skin, which is coated with mud and dried sweat from the past three days.

" It might not be required," I call, watching him take off his shirt. " But it always ends up with one or both of us naked, eventually."

He returns my smirk as I swim over to the edge and reach up to him to help him pull the rest of the mud-encrusted bandages off.

" Grab that soap and c'mere," I tell him cryptically, ducking underneath the water again. I swim under the surface until I can hear the waterfall pounding down over my head, and I come up for air when I'm on the other side of it, in a shallow little cavern with boulders big enough to sit on. I climb up onto one and wait for Cloud. He follows my lead before too long, grabbing onto one of my legs to pull himself up above the water.

" Here," he says, handing me the slippery little bar of soap. I grab his arms and pull him up onto the smooth rocks beside me.

" It's cold under here," he complains as I wash his cuts.

" Wonder how long until these stitches come out," I say, studying them in the shady light behind the waterfall, checking for any signs of infection.

" Another week, I think," he says as I cup my hands under the falling water and then dump it over his cuts to rinse the soap away.

" I'll come with you," I say. " If you want," I add quickly, clearing my throat.

" Yes," he says simply, taking the soap from me and rubbing it on my shoulder, which still has the remains of someone's muddy handprint on it.

Neither of us is willing to linger there too long, much as we might like to if we weren't looking for Tseng. When both of us are clean we swim back to the shore, climb out and shudder in the wind that comes down from the hill the waterfall is tumbling over, huddling together on the mossy ground.

" Forgot we don't have towels," I mutter grimly as he shakes against me. We both draw our legs up to our chests and hug them to us, feeling stupid now.

" Feels good to be clean, though," he offers charitably, his teeth starting to chatter. Above us the sun breaks through a patch of clouds, and I squint up into the light.

" Here," he says, grabbing our clothes and dunking them in the water. I start to protest, but when he's scraped most of the mud off he lays them out on the ground to dry, and I begin to catch his drift. He lies down himself, spreading out his arms and legs in imitation of our shirts and pants.

" If we lay here for a few minutes the sun will dry everything," he explains, looking over to me. I begrudgingly follow his lead, and the soft moss does feel good on my sore back.

" Just think if Tseng came along now," I mutter to myself after some time has passed, laughing. Cloud grins.

" Or Tifa and Elena," he chimes in, and I snort.

" I don't think they'd look twice," I say without meaning to, and I wait for him to tense up, but he only lies still, his eyes shut against the sun.

" I guess it wouldn't be anything they hadn't seen before," he says, possibly missing my point.

" Hey now," I object, poking him in the ribs. " Elena and I never boned."

" I figured as much," he says, opening one eye to look over at me. " But I'd be surprised all of the Turks hadn't seen you naked at some point or other in their illustrious careers."

" That's not—" I start to protest, but then stop myself. " Well, Rude, yeah, but that was sort of a practical joke that went wrong. And I guess Tseng was with us that day, too, so yeah, but Elena – oh, wait. There was that one time." I start laughing to myself, and Cloud shakes his head at me, mercifully not asking for an explanation.

When we're relatively dry we dress and grab our packs, Cloud stowing the first aid kit in his before heaving it onto his back.

" Which way should we go today?" he asks, and I'm surprised he's consulting me.

" What if we just walked around randomly?" I suggest, feeling suddenly inspired. He gives me an incredulous look.

" You're the one who said this place was sacred!" I remind him, throwing out my arms. " Maybe the magical spirit forces will guide us or some shit."

" How about southeast," he says, deadpan, pulling a map from his pack and starting to walk away from the lagoon. " If you feel any magical spirits tugging at you just let me know, and we'll change course."

" Hey, where's your sword?" I ask him, noticing it's gone when he walks ahead of me.

" Lost it," he says with disinterest, still studying the map.

" What? When?"

" Last night during the storm, I guess," he says with a shrug. " I looked for it this morning and it was gone."

" That doesn't make any sense," I mutter as we walk, a feeling I can't quite interpret growing in the pit of my stomach. How could a heavy sword like that get swept away in the storm if our tent stayed in place?

" You don't seem too concerned," I remark as he finally folds the map and shoves it into his back pocket.

" I've been meaning to get rid of it anyway," he says blithely, keeping his eyes straight ahead. It takes me a little while, but as we're walking I eventually realize that it was probably the same sword Sephiroth died on, and I can hardly blame him for his attitude toward its loss. Still, something's not right.

Cloud and I walk southeast for two hours before stopping to rest and drink water near a tiny stream. I look up at the canopy of trees above our heads, and notice that the foliage here looks a little more delicate than it did in the other areas we trekked through.

" If we leave without finding him I'll always wonder," I mutter to myself, thinking out loud. Cloud takes the canteen from me and stares down into it, doesn't drink.

" You'll always wonder anyway," he says darkly. " Trust me."

Something about his sentiment bothers me in a way I can't quite put my finger on. I know he's talking about Aeris, about his vision of her in the church after she died. I think of Rufus and realize I've never wondered about him, or at least I never did until I saw Cloud in the bathtub that day and thought I was looking at Rufus.

" Do you believe in the lifestream and all that nonsense?" I ask, my cheeks heating, my eyes on the ground.

" Obviously you don't," he says shortly, avoiding my question.

" I don't know," I mutter, sorry I brought it up. " I've always believed in hell. I don't know about heaven."

" The Lifestream isn't heaven or hell," he says. " It's sort of like a flow of energy, keeping the planet alive. I think," he adds uncertainly.

" So you think she's there?" I ask.

" There's another place," he says quietly, after a pause. " The Promised Land."

I stand up abruptly, those three words ripping open old scars. The search for the Promised Land had nearly driven Rufus out of his mind before he died. It was part of the reason he met with Sephiroth in Shinra Tower the day it was destroyed by Diamond Weapon. He used to make fun of his father's obsession with the Promised Land, but when he took over as president of Shinra his feelings immediately and inexplicably changed.

" Let's go," I say, not wanting to talk about this any longer. I reach down and help Cloud up, and he seems relieved to stop discussing the subject himself.

We move ahead through the jungle for two more hours, the scenery hardly changing. The only thing of interest that we came upon all day was a small canyon with walls too steep to descend. Cloud called down into it, and we circled it for awhile, but there was nothing inside except a few birds who were scared by the echoing sound of our voices.

I can sense it before he actually stops, the fact that he knows we have to turn back soon if we want any chance of making it back to the ruins of the Temple before sunset. But he presses on a little longer, for me, I think, until a voice crackles on our radio.

" Tifa?" It's Cid, and even over the static-filled radio channel I can hear a hint of panic in his usually disaffected voice.

" Yeah?" she answers after a few seconds.

" I think you'd better get back here," he says tightly. " Reeve's kind of gone under, and Rude and I can't get him to wake up."

There's a massive silence then, and though it only lasts for a few seconds I can feel Tifa's terror, Elena's heartbreak and my disbelief hanging palpably within it, like a dense fog over the quiet jungle.

" You hear that, Cloud?" she asks.

" Yeah," he answers sadly. " We were just on our way back, anyway," he lies, glancing at me.

" Then we'll meet back at the Highwind as soon as possible," Tifa says slowly. " C'mon, guys. Run it if you have to. Reeve needs us." I know she's talking to Elena more than anyone else, and I wonder how she'll ever get her to comply. Cloud clicks the radio off.

" Reno," he says simply, staring at me and waiting for my reaction.

" Fucking Reeve!" I scream, when nothing else comes. I turn and start ripping at the nearby plants, kicking rocks, generally flying into a frenzy.

" Of course he had to go and fucking get himself hurt – _ow_!" I stub my toe against a tree trunk as I'm kicking around furiously, and I fall to my knees, wincing at the pain shoots up through my leg.

" Shit," I say weakly, slamming my fist into the ground. I want to take the jungle on, to kick its ass, to hold it accountable for not hiding Tseng, alive and well and waiting. Cloud puts his hands under my arms and pulls me up, and I hang in his grip like dead weight. I think of that day in Aeris's church when I did the same thing for him, and know I'm letting Tifa down.

I wipe at my eyes, and he turns me in his arms. I can't look at him, my lip is trembling and I have to tell myself I'm mostly upset for Elena and Rude, because they'll be destroyed by this. I have to tell myself it's not my own disappointment making me break down, that he wasn't really my friend, that we didn't really mean anything to each other outside of work.

This line of thinking, more than anything, sets me off. The lie doesn't help, it hurts, and I fall against Cloud's shoulder, biting my tongue and willing myself not to make any sound, though I know he can feel the dampness against his neck as I press my face to it.

He doesn't tell me it's okay, that it's alright, doesn't say anything to falsely placate me, and doesn't ask me to get a move on, though I almost want him to. I don't want Reeve to die. So I let him hold onto me for only a few seconds before I lift my head and draw the back of my hand across my face, trying to wipe away the evidence of how this has ruined me.

I'm looking over Cloud's shoulder through blurred vision when I see it, and I jerk in his arms, causing him to start and pull back to look at me.

" What--"

He hasn't even gotten the question out before I'm pushing around him and flying toward the movement I saw in the bushes behind him. It was different than the erratic motions of the animals I've grown accustomed to since we landed here. It was something else - something small but almost human, something wearing a blue tunic.

" Reno, wait!" Cloud is calling, but I can't stop charging through the jungle. I've lost sight of the thing, but I can hear it moving through the brush, and can see the occasional shake of a palm frond ahead of me as it goes. I stumble over something as I'm moving, and when I look back I see it's a floppy yellow hat. My breath catches and I snatch it up as Cloud comes thundering along, nearly tripping over me as I'm getting up, the hat in my hand.

" These are the hats they wore," I tell him, thrusting it in his face, my eyes wild with excitement. " The things that lived in the Temple, they wore these!"

" You saw something?" Cloud asks, whirling around. I turn and try to find the little creature again, to listen for its footsteps through the woods. But things are suddenly quiet and still.

" Shit!" I curse, spinning in frantic circles and seeing nothing now. " It was just here, one of those temple guys, I swear --"

" Look!" Cloud shouts suddenly, pointing back toward the way we came. I hear an almost imperceptible squeaking noise, and suddenly two little creatures are rushing away from us through the jungle. Without speaking or looking at each other, Cloud and I hurdle after them.

" Wait!" Cloud is shouting. " We're not going to hurt you!"

" Like hell," I mumble furiously as we catch up to one of them, and I leap through the air, arms outstretched. It juts away from me before I can grab it, and I land hard on my stomach, bouncing a little and wincing. When I open my eyes I see that I'm staring down into a shallow valley we somehow managed to miss before. In the center of the clearing there is a low wall made of polished stones, and as Cloud trips over me and falls onto my back I realize what it is: the beginnings of a new Temple.

The creatures are all over the clearing, staring at us with silent terror and dressed identically in blue tunics and large straw hats that their huge, rabbit-like white ears poke through. They are just like I remember then, the strange little beings that seemed so interested in taking Tseng's body from us. To bury him with the proper rites, we assumed. They were like monks, after all. And they had carried him away so respectfully.

" Tseng?" I call, my voice cracking as I struggle out from underneath Cloud and run toward the creatures. They retreat from me in a panicked rush, some of them ducking into makeshift huts that line the valley.

" Wait!" I shout, going after them, but they only hurry away, making indecipherable sounds of fear.

" At least show me where you buried him," I cry, falling to my knees as it becomes clear that there is no one here but these frightened little beings.

They stop running and begin whispering wordlessly to each other when Cloud steps up behind me. They point to him with interest, and start to draw closer, still wary of me, but curious about him.

" Do they remember you?" I ask him, looking up from the ground, unable to stand under the weight of my disappointment.

" They remember her," he answers breathlessly, staring back at them as if mesmerized. One of them reaches up to take his hand, and he lets it pull him toward one of the huts. I struggle to my feet and follow them, confused.

Inside the hut there are more hiding creatures, but they don't seem startled to see Cloud arrive. The one who has him by the hand leads him to the back of the hut, where his buster sword is lying on a ceremonial alter, decorated with pink and purple flowers.

" My sword," he says in a whisper, not moving to take it back. I watch them regard him worshipfully with growing annoyance.

" What the hell is going on?" I ask him hoarsely. Outside the sun is disappearing quickly, and I know if Cloud turned on the radio he'd hear Tifa asking where we are.

" It's Aeris," he says, looking in the direction of his sword but staring right through it, his mako eyes unfocused. " She's here. She's with me."

" Well that's just great, Cloud," I say, my voice hollow, turning to go. " I'm glad you got to reclaim your ghost. So much for Tseng. Now if you don't mind me, I'm gonna try to get back to the ship before Reeve dies."

I walk out of the hut and into the darkening clearing, and the creatures are lighting torches against the oncoming night. I see a group of them huddled near a dark tent-like structure in the back and scowl at them. As I'm glowering Cloud walks by me, being led by two more creatures, one of them missing a hat. He looks back at me as they guide him toward the dark tent.

" It might be . . .," he trails off, and I know what he's thinking. The dark tent might be Tseng's grave. I follow them mindlessly, the sky blazing red above me like a sign of the end times that have already come and gone. I'm choking back tears as we draw closer to the tent, not wanting to know. I'd rather wonder for the rest of my life than know for sure, I realize sadly as I approach the confirmation of my worst fears.

I hear Cloud gasp when he walks inside, and I pray I won't find rotting bones waiting for me there. My stomach lurches at the thought, but the place doesn't smell like death at all – there's a scent of flowers, and something acidic and medicinal. I poke my head inside and wait for my eyes to adjust in the darkness.

I see him like a vision, lying on a modest cot along the far wall. There is a ring of tiny blue flowers around his final resting place, and I walk toward it with a listless gait, not knowing what I'll do when I get there. I swallow my sobs as I marvel at how well-preserved Tseng's body is. How long has it been? And he still looks just as we did on the day he left him. Better, even. It must be due to some magical property of these creatures who have tended to his remains.

Or.

Wait.

Tseng opens his eyes and frowns at me, and I scream at the top of my lungs, causing the Temple keepers to shriek in high pitched squeals and flee the tent so frantically that it shakes around us. I hear Cloud fall down behind me, and Tseng sits up in alarm, his feet disturbing the previously perfect line of blue flowers around his bed.

" T-T-T- but," I stutter, walking backward until I trip over Cloud and fall hard on my ass, unable to take my eyes off of Tseng, who is watching us with confusion. Cloud and I sit on the ground and stare, our mouths hanging open stupidly.

" Reno," Tseng says seriously, walking over and kneeling down to face us. " My God. You cut your hair."

I reach back and touch the back of my neck to make sure he's right, unable in the moment to remember my name, let alone my hairstyle.

" I never thought I'd see the day," he says, straightening his own neat ponytail, which has grown longer. Aside from that, the only change in his appearance is the relative disarray of his clothes: his white shirt is rumpled, and when he moves I can see the slit down the middle, the place where Sephiroth nearly cleaved him in two.

" But, but," I stutter, struggling to find my voice. " You were dead."

He frowns.

" Is that what you all thought?" he asks with surprise, sitting back a little. " I always assumed you knew what you were doing, leaving me with the Lagomorphs. They were the only ones who had any hope of healing me--"

Before he can finish I've jumped on him, hugging his shoulders and squeezing him as tight as I can, to prove to myself that he's really there.

" Really, Reno, have you any sense of protocol left after my absence?" he asks, but I can hear his smile, and he pats my back reassuringly.

" And why is Cloud Strife here?" he asks with concern when I pull back. I whirl and look at Cloud as if I'm only now noticing his presence.

" He helped me find you," I explain weakly, staring at Cloud as he remains on the ground. It's gotten darker outside, but I think can see the tracks of dried tears on his face, lit by the shine of a single candle burning on a table against the far wall of the tent.

" Avalanche working with the Turks?" Tseng mutters, standing and pulling me up with him. " How long have I been gone? Have humans evolved into apes, as well?"

" I think it's been about six months," I say, wiping at my eyes, my nose.

" More like nine," Cloud says quietly, standing.

" I must have been in a coma for a long time," Tseng says, shaking his head. " It didn't seem that long, to me."

" What were you doing, just sitting here all this time?" I ask, starting to shove him and then stopping myself.

" Waiting for you to come back," he answers plainly, the words stabbing at me. " And you see this?" he asks, pointing down to his legs. " This is new. Walking, that is. A relatively recent redevelopment."

" We thought you were dead," I say, shaking my head, wishing I could turn off the tears that just keep washing over my cheeks.

" Didn't Rufus tell you?" Tseng asks, sending a chill down through me.

" What?"

" Rufus," he says plainly, turning back and going toward the bed. In his gait I can see that walking still isn't exactly easy for him, and he takes his time, bending down to retrieve one of the Shinra radios from the darkness.

" The batteries recently died," he says, handing it to me. " But I was communicating with Rufus on that radio for awhile."

I start to fall down, but Cloud catches me, holding me up by my arm.

" Hey," he says carefully. " Speaking of the radios, we should get in touch with the others and then get going. Reeve needs help."

" The others?" Tseng says, " Reeve came along? Color me surprised, he hardly ever leaves the city. Who else?"

" The Turks, buddy," I say, clapping a hand on his shoulder, pushing away what he said about Rufus for the moment. Cloud's right, Reeve is counting on us.

" Elena and Rude," Tseng says, smiling slowly. " And my replacement as leader?" he asks as we walk toward the door of the hut. " Don't tell me it's Reeve," he says gravely.

" No," I say as we step outside.

" Oh, God, Reno," he says, looking at me seriously and pausing in place for a moment. " It's not you, is it?"

" No, Tseng, no one replaced you," I say with a morbid laugh as I take the radio from Cloud. My hands are shaking. I don't know how to tell him that the Turks are done, that Shinra has fallen, that Rufus – who he somehow thinks he's been talking to all this time – died along with the company. And as I flip the radio on and bring it to my lips, I realize I don't know how to tell everyone the good news, either.

" Reno!" Tifa is screaming when I turn the channel on. " Cloud! Where the hell are you two?" Her voice is raw, and I swallow a lump in my throat, wondering how Reeve is doing.

" Tifa," I respond, my voice croaky and strange.

" Reno, what the--"

" We found him," I say in an unceremonious strain. " Tseng. He's here. He's alive."

I wait for her response, hearing nothing but dull static for a moment.

" Tell Elena and Rude," I add, trying to hide the tremble in my voice.

" They heard," she says softly, and I can hear Elena in the background, weeping with relief, her cries nearly drowned out by Rude's whooping and cheering.

" Listen, why don't you come pick us up?" I ask. " Tseng isn't going to be able to run anytime soon, and we need to get the hell out of here before Reeve – you know. Just look for torches burning as you fly over the southeastern part of the jungle. You won't be able to set the ship down, but you can throw down a rope ladder."

" A-alright," Tifa says, too stunned to argue with my plan. I flip the radio off just as the last of the sunlight is disappearing around the horizon. The Temple-dwelling creatures are gathered around us in a loose circle, watching us as if waiting to see what our next move will be.

" I don't know how to thank them," Tseng says, looking around as they regard us with curiosity. " I don't even know why they saved me. I'm not an Ancient. All I did was unintentionally help Sephiroth to get inside the Temple."

" She loved you," Cloud says quickly.

" What?" Tseng asks, looking to him.

" Aeris," he says, keeping his eyes on the creatures. " She cared about you, and they looked up to her, knew she would be the one to save the planet. She was sorry when Sephiroth attacked you, much as she might have tried not to show it. She said you grew up together."

" In Sector Five," Tseng confirms with a nod. " Where is she?" he asks lightly.

" Dead," Cloud tells him flatly, before I can open my mouth to explain it more carefully.

" _What_?"

" Sephiroth killed her," Cloud explains, looking at him sternly now. " I'm sorry," he adds, and I understand it as an apology for not being able to save her, though Tseng might not.

" My God," Tseng whispers, his knees shaking. I offer him my arm and he steadies himself against me.

" Sephiroth," he says with a shudder. " We've got to--"

" He's dead, too," Cloud says before he can finish. " It's all over," he adds, almost sadly.

" Well, I'm out of the loop," Tseng says darkly, putting a stray piece of hair back in place as the winds pick up above us. I hear propellers beating in the distance; the Highwind must be getting close.

" Anything else I need to know about?" he asks, and I can't look him in the eye. I stare up at the Highwind as it breaks its way toward us over the trees.

" I'll be behind you on the ladder, if you need help," I call over the noise of its descent, not ready to tell him about Rufus yet. Rufus wasn't just a pushy boss to Tseng, he was a kid he'd looked after for more than ten years. He used to give me a hard time for fooling around with Rufus, saying it was unprofessional, and I had always wondered if he just didn't think I was good enough for the boy he'd helped to raise.

Cid drops the long rope ladder and Cloud climbs up first. I notice that he has his buster sword strapped to his back, and wonder why he decided to take it back. I feel far away from him as I help Tseng onto the ladder. Now that I have my leader back the lines between us seem that much more distinct. I step onto the ladder behind Tseng and turn back to have one last look at the creatures who saved his life, but they've all gone back into hiding, certainly scared by the Highwind.

" Thanks," I whisper anyway, before turning away from the jungle for the last time. I watch as Rude reaches over with an enormous smile on his face, almost picking Tseng up completely as he helps him onto the ship. The Highwind starts to rise a little and I'm left to pull myself over the edge as I hear them celebrating his return on board, until Cloud leans over and yanks me up by the back of my shirt.

When I come aboard I see Rude with his hands on Tseng's shoulders, jumping up and down behind him in excitement. Tseng shakes Cid's hand and exchanges a smile with a nervous-looking Tifa, who quickly darts off after greeting him, presumably to check on Reeve. When she steps away Elena is standing behind her, her eyes raw but her hands folded neatly in front of her.

" Welcome back, boss," she says with some effort, and she's actually able to stand in place for a few seconds before throwing herself into his arms. He stumbles backward against the force of her elation, then steadies himself and hoists her up until her feet are off the ground.

" I missed you a little," she says, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

" You didn't really think I was dead, did you?" he asks, placing her down in front of him and bringing his hands to her waist.

" No," she says, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head slowly, as if only just realizing it herself. " No, I guess I really didn't."

I hear Cloud walking away behind me and I turn to watch him go. Cid has broken out a bottle of bourbon for the occasion, and Rude passes it to Tseng for the ceremonial first sip.

" I can't believe it," I say in a long, weary breath. Rude throws his arm around my shoulders and gives me a shake.

" You found him, Reno," he says, drunkenly kissing my cheek, though as far as I know he's sober. " You _found _him."

" I guess I did," I say slowly, as Tseng looks over and gives me a tired grin, Elena hanging on his side as if she'll never let him out of her grip again.

" To Reno, then," he says, raising the bottle of bourbon in my direction. " For a job well done." He drinks, and I shake my head in disbelief.

" Never thought I'd hear you make that toast," I admit, and Rude laughs.

" Neither did I," Tseng says with a grin.

* * *

Below deck, I pass a room with an open door while looking for Cloud. Inside, Tifa is sitting vigilantly at Reeve's bedside, a damp washcloth in her hand. She looks up at me briefly and then back to him.

" It's great that you found him," she says. " Reeve would be so happy."

" He will be," I tell her, leaning in the doorway. " We'll be in Kalm in an hour, and he'll wake up in the hospital and see Tseng standing there."

" I just hope he won't lose his leg," she says, her voice breaking a little. She brings a hand to her face.

" Hey, c'mon," I say, " This is Reeve we're talking about. He'd build himself a kick ass robot leg in no time."

" Robot leg," Tifa says with a scoff, shaking her head. " Reno, you're so absurd."

" Yeah, well."

" I guess I can see why Cloud likes to have you around," she says as I'm starting to walk off. " Absurdity can make things seem a little less tragic." She looks up at me with strange appreciation.

I don't know how to respond to that, far too stunned to speak, so I only smile a little and start to walk away. But when I turn around Tseng is standing there, staring in at Reeve.

" What happened to him?" he asks, walking around me and kneeling at Reeve's bedside.

" He twisted his ankle the other day, while we were out looking for you," Tifa explains. " Or broke it. I'm not sure. I think he has some kind of infection. He's breathing pretty regularly, but he's weak and we can't wake him up."

I walk over and look more closely at Reeve, who is lying under an assortment of blankets, his face placid and pale.

" How did you know I was here?" Tseng asks, watching Reeve with concern. " Reno told me you all thought I was dead."

" We did," Tifa says, sighing. " But Reeve got a transmission on an old Shinra radio, coming from this area, and we thought maybe . . . well. It was his idea to come and look for you."

" Maybe we should have brought him to the Lagomorphs," Tseng says thoughtfully.

" The what?" she asks, frowning.

" The beings who cared for the Temple," Tseng explains. " They healed me, I don't know how." He pulls back the fabric of his shirt to reveal a large scar that runs from his belly to his neck, and I have to look away, my memory of that same cut bleeding over my hands still too strong.

" I just want to get him home," Tifa says, shaking her head. " I'm going to go radio the hospital in Kalm and let them know we're coming."

She gets up and walks out, and I sit on the edge of Reeve's bed, next to Tseng.

" Listen," I say, my heart rate increasing and my throat going dry. " I have to tell you something."

He waits, watching me patiently.

" Rufus," I begin, and I have to look away for a moment. " He was killed, Tseng," I finally blurt out, not wanting to prolong this.

Tseng frowns, and tilts his head a little.

" No, he wasn't," he says, giving me a confused look.

" Yes, Tseng," I insist, my ire rising. I'm almost surprised that I could get irritated with him so soon after discovering he's still alive, though I shouldn't be, given our history together.

" How long ago did it happen?" he asks after a few moments of thoughtful silence.

" Almost five months."

" Reno, as far as I can tell, I've only been conscious for a few months," he says, looking down at Reeve. " And I've been in contact with Rufus since then."

" What do you mean, _in contact_?" I ask in a hiss, jumping up from the bed, afraid I'll disturb Reeve with the fit I can feel coming on.

" I heard him on the radio and I responded," Tseng says calmly, raising his shoulders. " He never answered me outright, but I could hear his voice."

" What was he saying?" I ask, my face growing hot.

" He was speaking to Heidegger and Palmer about various plans for the company," Tseng tells me.

" You must have been hearing old transmissions," I say, shaking my head and running my hands through my hair, trying to calm myself down. " Heidegger and Palmer are long gone. I think they died the same day Rufus did."

" How did he die, then?" Tseng asks, his tone indicating that he isn't buying this at all.

" Diamond Weapon attacked Shinra Tower," I mutter, flashes of that bloody day careening through my mind.

" Diamond – what?"

" Look, it's kind of a long story," I say, throwing out my hands. " Suffice it to say that Shinra Tower fell to the ground, and since then the company's been pretty much dead. And it's not remembered fondly, to say the least."

When I finish I let out my breath and wait for him to respond. He sits still on Reeve's mattress for a moment, his hands resting neatly in his lap.

" Let me review here," he says, reminding me of the briefings we used to have in the Turk meeting room, Tseng getting frustrated with my ravings and spelling them out for me to show me how rash I was being.

" Alright," I say in a huff.

" Sephiroth is dead," he says, raising an eyebrow. I nod. " And Shinra is – finished."

" Yes."

" But Rufus isn't dead, Reno," he says, shaking his head.

" I don't know what you heard on that radio, but if he never responded to you—"

" Never mind what I heard," he says calmly. " I would know."

" What?"

" I met Rufus Shinra when he was twelve years old," he tells me. " He was a ruthless brat, but I expected as much, having worked for his father in various capacities for the past five years. But we grew to respect each other over the years, and Rufus trusted me with some of the most important Shinra objectives, including organizing the Turks."

" I know all of this, Tseng."

" And I would _know_ if he was dead," he insists, with stoic confidence. " It was my job to protect him, and I would know if I had failed. I would feel it."

" I think I knew him pretty fucking intimately, too," I snap. " And I'm telling you, he's gone. I'm sure of it."

" You say he died when the Tower fell," Tseng presses. " Did you find his body?" He asks as if he knows already knows the answer.

" No," I tell him, looking at my hands. " We're still working through the debris. Sephiroth summoned Meteor before he died, and it did some damage to the city as well. But trust me, Tseng. He couldn't have survived it. There was no way."

" Not too long ago you assumed I hadn't survived," he reminds me with a smartass shrug.

" That was different!" I shout.

" I don't see how," he returns evenly.

" I can't believe we're fighting already," I mumble, crossing my arms over my chest.

" I can," he says, smiling slowly. " Especially considering the subject."

I roll my eyes and think of all the times he lectured me about getting involved with Rufus. It was unprofessional, it was unwise, it would cause discord among the other Turks. There was always some goddamn excuse, and now he's the one who can't let him go.

" I'm sorry if I'm being insensitive or whatever," I mutter. " But I wanted to tell you, before anyone else did."

" Thanks for the sentiment."

" You really don't believe me, do you?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. Elena appears behind me before he can answer, carrying a jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers.

" Hey," she says quietly, peeking inside. " How's Reeve doing?"

" I don't know," Tseng says, looking down at him. " It's funny - we never got along when we were working for Shinra. More than a few board meetings ended with him accusing me of wasting the company's money by employing Rude and Reno," he adds, throwing a grin my way.

" Did you actually defend us?" I ask with a scoff.

" I may have," he mutters vaguely, looking back to Reeve. " It's strange that he was moved to come and search for me. I thought I'd sit up with him for awhile."

" Well, I brought you some food," Elena says, walking inside and handing him the peanut butter and crackers. He smiles up at her gratefully.

" Stay with me?" he asks. " I don't think Reeve will offer me much in the way of conversation, and it seems that Reno has already had enough of me for one evening."

" Sure," she agrees happily, sitting beside him on the bed.

" Well, goodnight," I mutter, leaving the two of them alone. They wave at me as I walk off, and I can't help but resent how relentlessly optimistic they are now, just as they've always been. Tseng is as cool and collected as he's always been, even as Reeve is nearly dying at his side, and his fucked up insistence that Rufus isn't dead is still ringing in my ears. As if I wouldn't know better than him, when I had to watch the building Rufus was standing in crumble at my feet. But I know I should let it slide – he's probably just in shock after being inundated with so much new information.

I can't believe that only this morning I felt almost sure that he was dead and that we were only chasing our tails around the jungle. Now it seems so obvious that he was only waiting for us to inevitably discover him, as if he was on vacation for a few weeks, always destined to come back and start immediately getting on my case. I smile to myself as I come to the only bunker with a closed door. I have to admit that I've rather missed it; as adversaries go, he's always been one of my favorites.

Knocking on the door, I wait for Cloud to open it, but he only calls out weakly to ask who's there. Instead of answering I barge in, and find him lying on his side on a cot. He looks up at me without surprise.

" I thought you'd be up there getting drunk with Rude and Cid," he grumbles, resting his head back on his pillow.

" They've finished the bottle by now," I say without a doubt, walking to the bed and sitting down beside him. I expect him to turn away from me, for some reason, but he reaches up and rests a hand on my back.

" How's Reeve?" he asks as I lean down to absently kiss his ear.

" He's hanging in there, I guess," I tell him, sitting up again. " Tseng and Elena are keeping him company."

" She's so lucky," he says after a pause. " I hope she knows."

" Of course she does," I say, a little defensively. I start to tell him how deserving she is, start to cite her faith and her misery while he was gone, but I stop myself when I realize he's been through it all himself, twice over, and that he hasn't been rewarded yet. Unless you count me. Which I don't.

" I just—" He sits up quickly and looks at me with a desperate expression on his face. I know what he's thinking, what he's trying to say, and I know how impossible it must be to put into words.

" I keep thinking I should have tried harder with Aeris," he says, grabbing onto my arms for support. " That I should have brought her to those Temple people who healed Tseng, that I shouldn't have let her go."

" It was different," I remind him. " She died to save all of us. Right?"

" Well why me, then?" he asks, screwing up his face in righteous anger. " Why did I have to fall in love with her, and, goddammit, with him, too? They had their fucking destines – alright – but why _me_?"

I can only shake my head, at a loss. There's so much that has happened today that I can't begin to deal with. Tseng's return to life, his ravings about Rufus; Cloud's sense of injustice is just another thing to throw onto the growing pile of situations I'll probably never be able to fully process, let alone respond to in any constructive manner.

" At least I have you," he says, his expression softening. " I can't really see you sacrificing yourself to save the world anytime soon. Or trying to destroy it," he adds, after some consideration.

" It's not too terribly likely," I consent.

" Well, maybe that's why . . .," he starts, but trails off. I think I know what he means, but I'm not ready to hear it, either, so I only kiss the top of his head and pull him down onto the bed, lying behind him and drawing him tightly against me.

" We can probably get a little sleep before we get to Kalm," I tell him, my mouth close to his ear. He settles back into me, takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

" I feel like I haven't really slept since we left Midgar," he murmurs, already starting to wilt a little in my arms.

" I'll see what I can do," I say smugly, squeezing him round the middle and realizing that I've got no room to tease him:

I can't sleep without him anymore, either.

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for all of the thoughtful reviews! I know this is an obscure pairing, and I'm absolutely thrilled to have such a cool little readership.

More to come soon . . .


	7. Chapter 7

7.

The sound of the Highwind's engines shutting off startles me awake late that night. I open my eyes as the airship shudders to a stop, and the fact that I'm lying next to Cloud surprises me somehow. Groggy and unsettled, I roll away from him only to remember that I'm in a narrow cot instead of my considerably larger bed in Midgar. I'm falling off the bed just as he opens his eyes, and when I land hard on my elbows he pulls himself lazily over to the edge of the cot and looks down, his chin resting on the mattress and his eyes still half-closed.

" What are you doing?" he mumbles, staring at me.

" Dancing the merengue," I snarl up at him. " What the fuck does it look like I'm doing?"

He offers me a hand and I pull myself up, hissing as sharp pain crawls up my back. After five days of walking through the jungle and sleeping on the ground, I don't think my muscles have ever felt so sore. Cloud brings his hand to my neck and pokes at the knots inexpertly, and I groan and lean against the bed as little jolts of delightful pain shoot through me.

" Does that hurt?" he asks.

" Yeah, but don't stop."

" C'mere," he says, and I climb back onto the cot with a groan, lying on my stomach. He straddles my back and jams his fingers into my skin, moving them in circles up along my spine, and I stuff my face into the pillow to keep from screaming in alternating agony and bliss.

" We better get going," I mutter. But I don't move, only lie there drooling onto the pillowcase as he clumsily works me over.

" I guess," he says, yawning. " What time is it? Where are we?"

" Beats the hell out of me." I actually have a pretty good idea we're in the airfield outside of Kalm, and that it's a few hours before midnight, but he's cute when he's disoriented.

I hear sirens in the distance, and then boots thundering down the stairs out in the hall. Alarmed, I sit up without warning, and Cloud slips off of me, hovers for a moment on the edge of the mattress while trying to get his balance, then falls backward and lands on the floor with an incriminating thud. He grimaces and reaches down to rub his backside, and I start to apologize, but there's a knock at the door before I can.

" Up and at em'," Cid's voice barks, making me leap off the bed in terror. I glance at Cloud guiltily, as if he's a stowaway I'm hiding. He glares at me.

To my great relief Cid heads off down the hall, and I hear him knocking on other doors. The sirens are closer, and I realize it's an ambulance coming for Reeve. I hear more footsteps, and Tifa's voice through the wall.

" Here," I say, walking to Cloud and offering him a hand. He only glowers at me, scrambling up onto his feet on his own. He brushes off his pants theatrically before pushing around me toward the door.

" Goddamn, you're moody," I mumble, annoyed with my own remorsefulness. What was I supposed to do, welcome Cid and the others inside while he sat on my ass and rubbed my back? As if he would have stayed in place for that himself.

" I might as well date a freakin' woman," I snap, a little too loudly, as he heads off down the hall. He turns back and stares at me incredulously for a moment, then hurries up the stairs. I realize that 'date' is perhaps the least applicable term for whatever it is we're doing together, and stand in the doorway feeling ridiculous and hoping no one heard. But I don't have to worry about that for long, as a pair of steely-faced paramedics come rushing down the stairs soon after Cloud disappears up onto the deck.

One of them starts to speak to me when Tifa rushes out of a room down the hall and calls to him.

" In here!"

I step out of the way as they walk toward her, carrying a stretcher between the two of them. Standing uselessly in the doorway, I watch as they retrieve a lifeless-looking Reeve and carry him away, Tifa jogging after them.

" Want us to come with you?" I call without thinking when she reaches the stairs, nervously bouncing on her heels as the paramedics struggle to get the stretcher up to the deck.

" I guess," she says. She starts to follow them up, but only gets two steps up before she turns back.

" Yes," she amends, looking desperate.

I follow her up, immediately regretting the offer. I want to go back to Midgar and crawl into my bed, sleep for five days and then wake up to celebrate Tseng's return in traditional Turk fashion. Thinking of how we'll certainly put away Rude's entire collection of looted booze, my spirits lift a little as I climb up onto the deck. But then I realize the three of them might go back and finish it without me, since I've moronically volunteered to sit at Reeve's beside with Tifa.

Grimacing to myself at the thought of it, I try to come up with a way to get out of this, but when I look up to see Tifa standing on the deck and talking quietly with Cloud, my charitable intentions are suddenly revitalized.

" Hey," I say, walking to them and clamping my hands heavily on their shoulders. " Tailgate to the hospital, whatta ya say?"

Cloud pushes my hand off and Tifa looks at me with a drained sort of disgust.

" Only two of us can ride in the ambulance," she says, without malice or sympathy. " You can walk."

" I'll walk," Cloud volunteers, before I can protest. He bends down to relace one of his boots, surely thinking himself quite the martyr.

" Forget it, I can walk it," I snap. I'm not sure how far it is, but at the moment I'd happily hike eighty miles through a swamp just to keep him from having the satisfaction of being the selfless hero.

" I could use the exercise," he says coldly, standing to look at me. " I'll go."

" I want a smoke before we get there," I return quickly. " I'll walk."

" Reno, I said—"

" Fuck, will you just—"  
" Both of you can walk!" Tifa shouts. She gives us a look of furious exasperation before climbing down from the ship. " I'll see you there," she mutters as she goes.

" Man, fuck this," I mumble when she's gone, folding my arms over my chest. " I'm too goddamn tired to walk all the way into town."

Cloud starts to say something, but stops himself, and goes for the ladder with a defeated sigh. I hear someone walking up behind me and turn to see a very hungover looking Cid. He gives me a nod and takes a stubby cigarette from his lips.

" Ya'll go on ahead," he says. " We'll wait here for ya."

" Couldn't wake Rude, could you?" I ask with a grin.

" Hell no," he mumbles. " Bastard fell asleep in the hallway, too. Tifa and I had to drag him out of the way so the paramedics could get through."

" How about Elena and Tseng?"

" Aw, I didn't want to bother them," he says with a wave of his hand. " Fella's been stuck in a jungle for almost a year, might as well give him some private time with his little lady, if you know what I'm saying."

" Heh." My cheeks go red and I wonder if he knows that Cloud and I shared a room last night.

I turn and look at the lights of Kalm in the distance. The little town is only about a mile away, but I'm working off just a few hours of sleep and there's a cold wind blowing through the night air. I want to whine and stomp my feet, but as I hear the ambulance start up again and drive toward the city, I am a little glad I'm not stuck inside, watching Reeve grow clammier while Tifa silently has an aneurysm. I suck in my breath and go to the ladder, looking down to see Cloud waiting at the bottom.

We walk in silence across the dark plain for awhile, too tired to fight. As we start to draw closer we can see the shantytown that has sprung up on the outskirts of Kalm since Midgar suffered Meteor, oil drum fires and makeshift shelters scattered over the grass. People are shuffling around the area like zombies, and I hurry ahead to walk closer to Cloud, not thrilled with the prospect of being shaken down by a group of homeless bandits in the state I'm in.

" Do you think Reeve'll be alright?" I ask, not wanting him to know that at the moment I'm actually more concerned about the chances of the two of us surviving an attack by a gang of hungry refugees.

" I hope so," he says tightly.

" I wish we could get a hotel room in Kalm," I gush, matching his pace so closely that I almost trip him. As we approach the dusty encampment around Kalm a few of the men who are standing guard, watching over their families and few remaining possessions, look up at us with suspicion.

" They'll all be sold out," he says after a pause.

" Maybe one of these kindly folks will put us up," I mutter sarcastically as we draw closer. Suddenly I'm very glad he took his buster sword back from the Temple dwellers who swiped it during the storm, and that he remembered to strap it to his back before we left the ship.

" Just don't look anyone in the eye," Cloud says under his breath as we reach the first ring of tents. " Walk through like you own the place."

Like I own the place. I almost laugh to myself, looking straight ahead, trying not to see the people that stare at us as we pass through. I used to be a fairly big stockholder in the company that did essentially own these people. Maybe they were better off for it. At least when they had Shinra they weren't orphaned, as neglectful a parent as the cooperation had been. Shinra _was_ Midgar, and without them its weather beaten people have been turned out into the world at large. I wonder if they miss the rotting pizza and the filthy streets now that they're left with only dirty hovels on the borders of a city where they don't belong. I almost want to stop and ask them, but the nail-studded bats and squalling infants they've accessorized with keep me moving wordlessly ahead.

We've almost cleared the desolate area, the warmly lit borders of Kalm in sight, when I feel a hand on the collar of my shirt, pulling me backward. I stumble back with a yelp, and Cloud turns and draws his sword with a frightening reflexivity, his eyes set. But there's a switch blade at my throat before he can do anything with it.

" What the f—"

" Shut up," says a voice I don't recognize, and the blade presses closer to my neck, making me sputter a little. Cloud's eyes dart to mine for a moment, then snap quickly back to my attacker. There's a look of cold determination in his mako-infused gaze that I haven't seen since I threw a grenade in his general direction in Gongaga.

" Are you Reno?" the man behind me asks, giving me a jerk as he holds me in place. I choke and wince; he smells uncannily familiar, and it only takes me a moment to place the scent: the dumpster behind the diner in Sector Five that my friends and I used to raid when I was a kid.

" Let him go," Cloud says before I can answer.

" You are," the man says, ignoring him and chuckling sadistically to himself. " Artie said you'd be hanging around with that crazy fucker from the Reconstruction team." He flicks his head toward Cloud, scraping my neck with the blade as he does. I can feel a drop of blood rolling down my skin, and then I see it, dripping onto my t-shirt.

" Artie," I cough out.

" That's right, Artie," he says, jostling me with his knee. " He has a message for you."

Before he can continue, Cloud drops to the ground. The man jerks in surprise, and when Cloud springs up again we both get a face full of dirt. The man curses in my ear and his grip on me loosens, enabling me to squirm blindly away from him. I stumble forward and land on the ground, wiping at my eyes. I hear a strangled scream, and when I look up the man is staggering away, holding a bleeding cut across his stomach, Cloud standing firmly and watching him go, holding his blood-stained sword at his side. I don't recognize the guy, but his general appearance is familiar enough. He's one of the hoods in Artie's gang: when he turns back to shout at us I can see their signature brand mark on his cheek.

" You're dead!" he screams, starting to run when Cloud takes a menacing step forward. " Dead!"

When he's gone, Cloud hurries over to me and grabs my arm, pulling me up roughly.

" You threw dirt at me!" I shout. I'm secretly overflowing with gratitude, but my embarrassment won't let me show it. This is the second time he's saved my ass in a situation like this.

" I'm sorry," he says. We jog until we're within steps of the famous cobble stone streets of Kalm, and though the place has taken a beating itself since Midgar was largely evacuated, the return to relative civilization fills me with relief. We stop at the edge of town and look back, but there's no sign of the man Cloud sliced or a retaliating gang, only a few listless vagrants staring at us with dull interest from their places inside tents and around fires, unmoving.

We walk to the side of a building near the town's entrance and Cloud draws me into the shadows. He pushes me back against the wall and studies my face carefully, brushing dirt from my cheeks and eyelashes.

" My aim isn't as good as I thought," he says simply, tipping my chin up to look at the scratch on my neck.

" Will I live?" I ask, mocking his concern, though I do appreciate it.

" That depends," he says slowly, his hand falling away.

" Depends on what?" I grumble.

" On whether or not I'm with you the next time you get jumped," he returns dryly. He raises an eyebrow in the face of my indignance and then turns to go. I follow him after fuming to myself for a moment, and consider storming off to one of the local bars. But I'm still a little shaken from having a knife pressed to my throat, so I only trail resentfully along, ashamed of myself for not thinking as quickly as he had. So Artie is looking for me. I might have guessed as much, but I'm a little troubled by the fact that he's so hell bent on killing me that he's got scouts combing even the towns outside of Midgar.

" This is bullshit," I mutter to myself as we cross the crowded square toward the hospital, the same one Cloud was brought to not too long ago. The streets are busy even though it's late, people overflowing from inns and restlessly wandering. Kalm was the first city most people tried to flee to when Midgar crumbled in on itself, and before long they had to start turning refugees away, accounting for the riff raff that now surrounds the outskirts of the once charming and quiet city.

" The rest of the Turks are sleeping right now," I complain as we walk inside the front doors of the hospital, which is as crowded and chaotic as it was on the day we left with Cloud.

" You still consider yourself a Turk," he muses, not looking at me. There is a sizeable line at the front desk, and we go to stand at the back of it.

" Of course I do," I say testily. " What, you don't think of yourself as an Avalanche flunkie anymore?"

" Not really," he says, yawning and rubbing his eyes. " In a lot of ways I never really did. I was mostly along for the ride because of Aeris. And Sephiroth," he adds, somewhat reluctantly.

" So what are you, then?" I ask. " Retired Solider? Disgruntled former employee of Shinra, like me?"

" I'm nothing like you," he says with a scoff. I'm taken aback, and he seems rather surprised with the sentiment himself. He opens his mouth, shuts it, looks at me.

" Next," the nurse at the desk calls impatiently, and I hurry forward, not wanting to hear anything else he has to say at the moment. I give her Reeve's name and she tells me to sit and wait, nodding toward a room full of dour adults plastered with all kinds of grisly patchwork bandaging, with a few sallow-looking children thrown in for good measure.

" Great," I mumble, pushing away from the desk and walking aimlessly away, avoiding the waiting room. I can hear Cloud following me at a distance, and I pretend not to notice him, wandering the halls until I come to a bank of vending machines. They're in a quiet corner toward the back of the hospital, near a dirty window that looks out over downtown Kalm. The machines have all been turned off, but they're still relatively well-stocked, candy bars and bags of potato chips staring out at me. I kick one of them in frustration; even if they did have power, I haven't had any gil in my pockets for a long time.

" You hungry?" Cloud asks cautiously, standing about twenty feet away and peering into the little alcove, where I've braced myself against one of the machines.

" No, I just felt like kicking something."

I start to glower in his direction, but then realize I don't even want to look at him. _He just doesn't want to admit it_, I tell myself, _he's more like me than he thinks he is_. But suddenly I can't come up with any similarities. _He _wishes_ he was like me_, I tell myself without conviction, feeling pathetic.

He slides down against the wall behind me, taking his sword off his back and sitting on the floor, holding it across his lap. The thug's blood shines brightly on the blade, which might have been cause for some pointed questions in the lobby, were the hospital not still operating on madhouse rules because of the influx of Midgar refugees. But as it is he only wipes at it with the bottom of his shirt.

" I just," he starts quietly, shaking his head. " Want to forget that I ever worked for Shinra."

I can feel him looking up at me but I keep my eyes on the snacks inside the machine, their brightly colored packages shining in the florescent light of the hospital hall. They seem lonely inside their glass case, abandoned now that their mako-powered machinery has been deemed too unimportant to function.

" You're lucky that you still feel like a Turk, though," he mutters. " At least you belong somewhere. Now that Tseng is back . . .," He trails off. Still leaning against the machine, I turn around a little and glance at him. He's got his forearms resting on the blade of his sword, his legs stretched out in front in of him. He looks like a kid who's been sent to the corner for time out.

" Now that Tseng is back we're as good as gold," I say, straightening. " 'Cept our boss is still dead, so we won't be cashing paychecks anytime soon."

" Well, whatever will the Turks be reduced to if they can't go on missions?" he teases. " Guess you'll have to double up on the drinking."

" Unless Tseng was right about Rufus," I say, before I can think better of it. The air in the alcove seems to get thinner as the words leave my mouth; saying it out loud feels almost like admitting that it's possible that he is still alive. But it isn't. Couldn't be. I turn to Cloud, and he's staring at me, his arms folded over his chest as if the temperature in the room has dropped. Maybe there's a ghost about, I think with amusement, looking at my reflection in the plastic casing of the vending machine. I check for any caustic blond specters standing behind me, but all I see is Cloud, watching me from the floor.

" What about him?" he says after a long pause, as if he'd been trying to fight off the urge to ask.

" Forget it," I say, my heart rate increasing. I don't want to talk about Rufus, not really. Especially not in a hospital, where death is hanging in every corner, even in the vending machine alley we're hiding out in. I lean against the wall and slide down until I'm sitting beside him.

" Classified Turk information?" he jokes. I might be imagining things, but he sounds a little jealous.

" Something like that," I mutter, staring at my boots.

" Should we go try to find Reeve and Tifa?" he asks after we're both silent for awhile, listening to the hum of the overhead lights, calm and steady in contrast to the occasional scrapes and shrieks from distant rooms.

" I don't think I have the energy to stand," I tell him honestly, my eyelids starting to feel heavy. He takes my arm and starts to pull me to him, but I stay in place, giving him an irritated look.

" C'mon," he says, pushing the sword off of his lap. " I owe you one."

I'm too sleepy to put up much of a fight, so I give in as he pulls me down to him, my head sinking into the not unwelcome heat of his lap. I settle in as best I can, grumbling a little for good measure, tucking my hands to my chest. He puts a hand on my shoulder and starts rubbing again, finding knots and pinching at them as I grimace in torturous ecstasy against the cloth of his pants.

" If anyone comes by just tell them I have a head injury," I tell him, clawing at his knee as he presses into a particularly sore place on the back of my neck.

" I don't think anyone else is interested in the dead vending machines," he says, sinking his fingers deeper into my skin. " Your stellar reputation is safe," he adds sourly, flicking the back of my ear.

" Dumb fucker," I mutter, not knowing what else to say. One minute he's telling me he's nothing like me, as if I'm the bane of all existence, the next he's having a hissy fit because I don't want to be caught with my head in his lap. I give up on trying to decipher his bullshit and shut my eyes, hoping I can get at least a few moments of rest before I have to face the news about Reeve. He lets up on my neck and pulls a hand through my hair.

" What about that Artie guy?" he asks quietly. " Do you think he'll try to come after you when we're back in Midgar?"

" Don't worry your pretty little head over it," I mutter, not wanting him to start thinking of himself as my personal bodyguard. I'm not Aeris, goddammit. I can take care of myself.

I wait for him to punch me in response to the wisecrack, but he only slides a hand over my shoulder, holding onto me protectively. I would be aggravated, I decide, if I only had the strength. At the moment I'm content to let him labor under the delusion that I need him and his stupid buster sword, not even protesting as his grip tightens with tense determination, keeping me awake.

* * *

I wake up to the sound of my stomach growling, and when I sit up I see that Cloud has fallen asleep, his head tipped back against the wall and his mouth open slightly. I reach up under his chin and push it shut, and he chokes a little and jerks awake, narrowing his eyes at me when he comes to. I wipe a little drool from the corner of his mouth and grin at him.

" You look like a dumbass when you sleep," I tell him sweetly.

" Potato chips," he says dreamily, ignoring me. I follow his eyes to the lifeless vending machine we're sitting in front of, and see the chips he's talking about, right in the middle of the colorful assortment of goodies. Our stomachs rumble in unison, as if they're having a mournful cry together.

" Want me to smash it open?" I ask, lifting the hilt of his sword off the floor. He takes it from me and stands, sliding it back into its sheath.

" No," he says. " Let's go find out how Reeve's doing."

" Right, right," I say, grabbing onto his leg to pull myself up. He stumbles a little as I do, and when he lands against the wall I fall onto him, not entirely unintentionally.

" Quit messing around," he says. But he doesn't push me off, and I only smash myself closer.

" The things I'm gonna do to you when we get back to my room," I mutter, almost to myself, delirious with hunger and exhaustion.

" You're not going to get hammered with Tseng and the others?" he asks.

" Of course I am," I say, bringing my mouth close to his. " Eventually. But I've got to prioritize my schedule of debauchery." He chews at his lip, trying not to smile, and I let him off the hook by kissing him. His breath is a little stale, but his hot mouth is a welcome respite from the cold halls of the hospital, and it takes a fair amount of willpower to pull myself from him.

" I'll be impressed if you make it out of this hospital without collapsing," he says as I head down the hall. He follows me, and I try to keep my gait steady. My legs feel like puddy and I'm afraid he might be right.

When we come to the lobby I see Tseng and Elena standing near the waiting room. He looks incredibly uncomfortable, staring around at the bleary eyed crowd of people waiting for medical care, and she's holding onto his arm nervously.

" Hey," I call, walking over to them, and their faces light as I approach. " What are you two doing here?"

" We woke up and Reeve was gone," Elena says, stepping forward to hug me lightly. " Cid said you guys brought him here."

" We haven't been able to see him yet," I tell them.

" We?" Tseng says with a frown, and I turn around, expecting to see Cloud behind me. Instead I find a rangy young couple arguing over something in hushed voices. I scan the lobby until I see him standing at the check-in desk, where a nurse is pointing him down a long hall that branches off to the left.

" C'mon," I mumble, confused. Cloud starts off down the hall and I follow him, Elena and Tseng trailing behind.

" There are so many waiting for treatment," Tseng muses as we move through the busy halls. " And the refugee camp we walked through on the way here – is there anything left of Midgar?"

" Sure," I answer. " There's just not much to do there, unless you've been sentenced to help clean up. Or if you've got a gang to run," I add darkly, thinking of Artie.

" Sentenced?" Tseng says questioningly. Before I can explain Cloud arrives at a room with an open door and stops, looking inside before glancing back at the three of us. I give him a bewildered look, but he only shrugs and walks inside.

When we come to the room we find Tifa sitting by Reeve's bedside and clasping his hand. He's awake and looking at her with a doped-up grin on his face. He doesn't seem to notice us as we enter, but she does, dropping his hand and standing.

" Cloud," she says, smiling slowly. " Reeve's alright. His ankle was broken, but they put a cast on it." She goes to the end of the bed and lifts the pink blanket draped over his legs to reveal a fat plaster shoe on Reeve's left foot.

" Tseng," Reeve slurs, staring at him with hooded eyes, his head bobbing weakly as he struggles to lift it off of his pillow.

" Hello, Reeve," Tseng says, going to his bedside. Reeve's head drops back to the pillow, and he looks to Tifa.

" Am I dreaming?" he asks.

" No, Reeve," she tells him, smiling and patting his arm. " Tseng is here. We – Reno – found him."

" Well, Cloud helped," I blurt out stupidly. Reeve beams at us.

" They gave him painkillers," Tifa whispers.

" Duh," I say in a snorted laugh.

" Reeve," Tseng says seriously, as if he's speaking to him across the boardroom table and not looking down at him as he lies half-awake under a ridiculous pink blanket. " Tifa told me it was you who orchestrated the search for me. I want to thank you, sincerely."

" Hey, alright buddy," Reeve stammers, reaching out to touch Tseng's arm and batting at the air a few times before finding it. " No problem," he mumbles, his eyes blinking shut. For a moment it seems like he's passed out again, but he then snaps his head up, making us all jump a little, his eyes rolling back for a moment before refocusing on Tseng. Elena and I look at each other and laugh awkwardly, but Tseng just stares down at Reeve with unfiltered gratitude.

" He's going to stay in the hospital until the morning, and then he can come back to Midgar," Tifa says, sitting down again. " You all can ride back in the Highwind, if you want. I'll stay with him."

" Maybe I'll stay, too," Tseng says, and I can see Elena waver a little with disappointment.

" No, I think you should go," Tifa says. " It's probably better that you see Midgar . . . the new Midgar . . . in the dark, for the first time."

Tseng raises his eyebrows in surprise, and I can't decide which has stunned him more: hearing about the sorry state Midgar is in or the fact that Tifa Lockheart has presumed to give him an order. I stuff down a laugh; he's in for quite a shock. I wonder if she'll shackle him down with the rest of us, or if she considers his time spent lying half-dead in the jungle as penance for the evils of Shinra. Either way, he won't be escaping her self-appointed voice of authority anytime soon, if he stays in Midgar.

" She's probably right," Elena offers, placing a hand on his shoulder. " It's going to be a pretty disturbing sight either way, but it does look a little less devastating in the darkness."

" I don't know what to say," Tseng mutters, looking back to Reeve, whose eyes are shut now. " He must be horrified," he says, nodding to him. " Midgar was everything to Reeve."

" Yeah, but now I get to rebuild it my way," he murmurs, half-asleep.

Tseng shakes his head and smiles, going for the door. I look to Cloud, who has been hanging back all this time. He's staring into space, and as Elena and Tseng say their goodbyes and walk out, I go to him and wave a hand in front of his face. He gives me an annoyed look.

" Make sure he gets something to eat," Tifa calls as I'm dragging him out the door.

" I'm not brain dead, Tifa," Cloud says suddenly, turning in the doorway. " And I'm not deaf, either."

" I know, I just—" she sputters, but he's walking out the door. She looks at me with accusation, and I shrug, not bothering to hide my lunatic grin. I chase after Cloud as he goes down the hall, but when Tseng and Elena turn back to me I have to fight away the urge to run ahead to them. Elena takes Tseng's arm and says something under her breath, and my face burns as I imagine how she'll explain this to him.

" Tifa thinks I'm so stupid," Cloud fumes.

" Welcome to the club," I say, giving him a friendly slap on the back as the four of us push out into the stale night air.

* * *

Elena and I stand alongside Tseng as the Highwind draws closer to Midgar. He squints ahead, trying to make out its now indistinct form. Most of the city is in darkness since the mako power has drained out of it.

" The Tower," he says quietly.

" I told you," I mutter. " It's gone. Weapon finished most it off, and the rest of it went down with Meteor."

" Meteor," he says. " The Black Materia. I can't believe it all . . . came and went without me."

Elena leans against him as we start to descend toward the airfield. Midgar looks like a mass of twisted old farming equipment in the distance, where it had once been a fortress of light and steel, glowing against the night from behind an ever-present cloud of smog and general filth. I laugh to myself as I think of how much I miss it; it was a terrible place, but it was so alive. It hurts to see it dead the way it might sting to find a once-feared enemy lying lifeless in a ditch: I don't really want my old foe back, but I can't help being sadly struck by how vulnerable and hollow the thing I once hated has become.

I look over my shoulder to see Cloud leaning near the ship's controls, watching Cid as he carefully sets the giant ship down on the landing strip. He stumbles a little as it finds the ground, and I start to move away as if to catch him, but before I can Rude is thundering across the deck toward us. Elena and I jump away as he throws himself on Tseng, nearly causing both of them to tumble over the ship's railing.

" I forgot you were alive!" he bellows, and Elena smacks her forehead in disbelief. Tseng only pats Rude's shoulder reassuringly. He was always a bit more tolerant of him than he was of Elena and I, though I suppose he's already suffered the physical force of our respective relief at seeing him. Rude's reaction is just a little belated, or repetitive, at least.

" Now that Tseng's back we can kick this popsicle stand into shape," I joke, tipping my chin toward Midgar.

" I'm ready to help," Tseng says earnestly, looking up at his ruined hometown over Rude's shoulder. He moved to Midgar when he was a kid, after his parents fled Wutai because of the war. He'd always had a measure of pride about being from Wutai, but was also a regular defender of Midgar, back in the days when it served as Shinra's headquarters.

" Are you alright?" Elena asks as Rude releases him. Tseng says nothing for a moment, staring ahead at the empty place where Shinra Tower used to shine like a wicked beacon from the middle of the metropolis.

" As long as I have the three of you," he says, straightening his shoulders and looking around at us. " I haven't really lost anything."

Elena beams up at him with tears in her eyes, and Rude and I glance at each other over her head.

" Yep," I say with a nod. " Tseng's back in corny-ass form, good as new." Tseng gives me a fiery look and Rude tries and fails to swallow a laugh.

" _When Lord Godo commanded the respect of nations_," he mutters under his breath, and I've doubled over laughing before he's gotten 'Godo' out. Even Elena can't help but giggle, bringing her hand to her mouth.

" What?" Tseng asks, frowning and only making us all laugh harder. I'm on the ship's deck now, struggling to breathe.

" What? What is it? What did he say?"

I manage to get my eyes open as I'm cracking up, lying on the deck with my hands on my stomach, and I realize for the first time since I've been back that you can see the stars over Midgar now. The smog has finally cleared off.

* * *

The sun is starting to rise as we ride back into the city in a buggy driven by Barrett. Tifa must have called him from the hospital, because he was waiting when we deboarded on the tarmac. He and Tseng had nodded at each other wordlessly, and Cloud climbed into the passenger seat beside him, leaving me to file into the back with the rest of the Turks.

As the jagged landscape of Midgar soars alongside us, Tseng watches without showing much emotion, the three of us huddled around him and waiting for some kind of response. He was always so perfectly collected, so unmoved by chaos, and I think we're all a little terrified that we might have rediscovered him weaker. But he stays steady all the way to the dormitories, only occasionally shaking his head as he surveys the damage.

" Reeve certainly has his work cut out for him, if he hopes to rebuild the city," he says simply when we park in front of our makeshift apartment building and slide out of the car.

" And you'll be helping him," Barrett says gruffly, drawing sharp looks from all of us except Cloud, who is walking toward the building.

" How's that?" Tseng asks coolly, and I watch Cloud go inside without so much as a look back at us.

" The Turks have been – asked to come back, to help," Elena says quickly, trying to avoid a confrontation. But when I glance over at Rude I can see he's thinking the same thing I am: now that Tseng is back the Turks are a little more powerful, maybe not so easy to push around. We're no longer completely aimless now that we've found our boss. And suddenly I think I understand why Cloud has avoided my eyes ever since Tseng and Elena showed up in the hospital. I look up after him again, but he's gone.

" To help, certainly," Tseng says with a tight smile that I can't read.

" This is where we've been staying," Elena says, leading him toward the dormitories while Barrett stares after us with a look of apprehension. " You can stay with me and Reno," she adds as we walk inside.

" Don't know how much longer we'll be here, though," Rude says, trying to prod him toward an escape plan as we head for the stairs.

" Hmm." Tseng only glances around at the modest accommodations, not offering any hint of his true intentions. The four of us climb the stairs to the tenth floor, and Rude gives us a grin as he walks off toward his room.

" Later," he says with a wave. " Get some sleep. We've got some hardcore celebrating to do." When he opens the door to his apartment Scarlet is standing there with a scowl on her face.

" Where the hell have you been?" she asks. " I've been bored out of my—"

She freezes when she sees Tseng, and her eyebrows shoot up.

" Weren't you dead?" she asks, stumbling a little as Rude puts an arm around her shoulders and gives her an affectionate shake.

" Scarlet," Tseng says, walking to the middle of the hall. " Reno told me about Rufus. Is it true?"

" Yeah," she says, losing her indifferent posture and looking at the ground, straightening her hair.

" I'm so sorry," Tseng says, folding his hands in front of him. " You have my sincere condolences."

" Right," she mutters, unable to meet his eyes. I haven't heard Scarlet say a word about her brother's death since the day it happened, when her breakdown nearly shook the remains of the Tower he'd died in to the ground. In life they had never gotten along, but apparently the Shinra twins had shared some kind of connection I wasn't aware of.

" Tonight," Rude says, pointing back to us before shutting the door. " Come over around sundown and we'll do your welcome home party up right."

" Whatever you say," Tseng answers, waving. I watch him with a frown, wondering why he didn't tell Scarlet his little theory about Rufus still being alive. Has he finally come to grips with it, now that his shock has receded? When he turns around I try to read his face for signs, but attempting to decipher his expressions is as hopeless as always.

The three of us go into our apartment and Elena and I show Tseng around before having breakfast together at the table. She opens a can of tuna for each of us and Tseng looks down at his with surprising delight.

" I haven't had any meat since – well, since before I died," he says, smiling to himself, pleased with his own stupid joke.

" Don't say that!" Elena protests.

" What did they feed you?" I ask.

" Mashed vegetables for the most part," he says. " This is actually a welcome change."

" Just give it a few days," I mutter. " You'll appreciate it less and less."

" How do you feel?" Elena asks, leaning an elbow on the table and gazing at him with poorly concealed awe.

" Tired," he answers.

" You can sleep in my bed," she blurts out, turning bright red when she hears herself. Tseng only smiles and nods, as if this is nothing unusual.

" I'm gonna hit the hay myself," I tell them, throwing my empty can of tuna in the trash and heading for my room. " Wake me up for the party."

As I head for my room I find myself hoping Cloud will be waiting there, sitting on the bed and staring up at me with that pathetic look of his, needing me to change his bandages. But when I open the door the room is empty. I go to the window and look out at the city as the sun comes up over the horizon. I can hear Elena and Tseng's voices out in the kitchen, then the shuffle of their feet and her bedroom door closing. I feel abandoned, with the two of them together and Rude and Scarlet surely screwing across the hall. So I'm the odd one out, if the old battle lines are drawn again.

I sit on the edge of the bed, knowing I should rest. It takes me a few minutes to realize that I'm fighting off sleep because I'm waiting for Cloud to come barreling through the door. I scoff at myself and think about all the times I waited for Rufus to do the same. Lying on my back in my bed in Shinra Tower, perking up at every set of footsteps that approached in the hall outside. Pretty sad, really, that the highlight of my days had been his showing up and fucking me apropos of nothing. It's funny, that even after the world crumbled around me, taking Rufus with it, I'm still _that guy_.

Not funny, really.

I sit up and glower around at the empty room, feeling suddenly uneasy. The sake that is still sitting on my bedside table calls to me sweetly, and I know that if I down the remaining half a bottle I would sleep like a baby until sunset, when I could get up and start the process over again at the party for Tseng. I glance at the bottle, the sunlight from the window winking at me through the clear liquid. But I look away, my hand going to my neck, to the place where the thug's blade scraped my skin. The cut stings a little against my dirty fingertips, and I wince and wish again that I had been the one to get us out of that mess. But no, I'm the guy who sits on the bed and waits. The same guy who can't even bring himself to use a gun for anything more than idle threats, just because he shot someone in the face when he was fifteen, somehow not expecting the brutal color of the explosion that followed. I hold onto my elbows, thinking of it. Sometimes it's easy to forget that it didn't just happen yesterday. Sometimes my whole life feels like one long, tiresome day, segmented only by drunken blackouts and restless sleep.

Now Artie wants to kill me, and Cloud wants to save me. I don't want to die, but I don't want to be saved, either. With everything that has happened in the past year, I feel like I'm the only person alive who hasn't saved anyone. But I did save Cloud, as haphazardly as possible, and only when he was trying to hurt himself. Maybe that's what I'm here for, I think with a scoff. To save the real hero from himself.

With that in mind, I rise from the bed, unscrew the cap on the sake and take a few gulping swallows. I slam the bottle back down on the table and turn for the door, a sort of aimless fury building up inside of me. But I have an idea where I might aim it, if I have to pick a place.

I climb the five flights of stairs in feverish leaps, my body protesting as my muscles quiver and threaten to give up. But I make it to the top floor before I've had time to change my mind, and when I put my hand on the doorknob to Cloud's apartment I know it will turn. Not because he's expecting me, but because there is no one left in the world who he might need to lock the door against. Except me, I guess. He might be able to drop my petty enemies with one dispassionate swipe, but I'm the only one who can hope to jerk him around anymore, and it's about time I took advantage.

When I walk inside I find his apartment still mostly untouched, and I go to his bedroom, a little nervous as I remember the day I found him here, half-dead. But he's lying in bed when I get there, and he lifts his head from his pillow to narrow his eyes at me as I enter. I have to pause for a minute, admiring him with ravenous anticipation. The light from the row of short windows near the ceiling shines on his bare back as he twists in his sheets, and his hair is wet and messy.

" You took a bath," I say with surprise. He's either more desensitized or more morbid than I suspected, and when I crawl onto the bed and pour myself over him I can feel it on his skin, sweet and clean and damp.

" What are you doing?" he mumbles, feigning annoyance as he lets his elbows slide out, falling back onto his pillow while I kiss his neck. I answer him by pinning his arms back over his head and moving to his mouth.

" Brushed your teeth, too," I say against his lips, grinning. One of his dimples puckers and then disappears.

" You didn't," he says, squirming beneath me, his hips grinding against mine as he does. " You taste like tuna. And sake. Damn, Reno, the sun's only been up for a few minutes."

" Not interested in your comments on my lifestyle at the moment," I mutter, tearing the sheet off of him. He's wearing only boxers, and I quickly do away with them. I roll off the bed to undress, and when I bounce back onto the mattress he yanks the sheet up over us.

" Aren't you tired?" he murmurs as kiss his shoulders, still sunburned and starting to peel in places. The sheet floats down onto my back like a billowy white tent.

" Maybe I'm sleepwalking," I tease, looking up at him. His eyes go to the cut on my neck and he regards it seriously, licks his finger and then wipes at a smear of dried blood that streaks down toward my collarbone.

" You might have just licked it off," I say, annoyed with the look of worry on his face. I reach down and give his cock a squeeze, hoping it won't start sinking at the sight of my war wounds.

" I'm not a vampire," he says, holding onto my arms and arching his back, pushing himself up against my hand. He moans a little, in spite of himself, I imagine.

" You're no fun," I tell him, stroking him with practiced restraint. He sighs with something like gratitude, his hands falling away.

" What do you want me to do?" he asks breathlessly. " I'm not going to suck your blood."

" You might suck something else," I say hoarsely, my mouth close to his ear. I'm not sure how I was expecting him to respond, but I have to admit it surprises me when he obliges me without a word, as if he was hoping I'd ask. He pushes me backward and leans down over me, taking in as much as he can. I have to squeeze handfuls of the sheets until my knuckles go white to keep from jerking upward into his mouth, but I don't want to put him off of it by choking him, as it's probably the first time he's done it and I'm sure as hell going to want more of this in the future. His technique is pretty sloppy, but I don't bother to offer any pointers, too blissed out to get a coherent sentence together. It's been so long since I've had this that it almost feels brand new. Rufus wasn't exactly the most giving person, and even before him I was never really involved with anyone who was. I consider just letting myself spill into Cloud's hot mouth, then remember why I came up here and push him off. He sits up, out of breath. When he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand any hesitation in me departs, and I shove him backward and fall onto him.

There are a lot of things I want to ask him, even now. I want to know why he disappeared this morning, why he didn't come back to my room with me, why he's afraid of people finding out about us. His reasons are likely the same as mine, vague and stupid, stuck in the past, wary of another heartbreak we likely wouldn't survive. I want to ask him what he would do if Aeris showed up alive tomorrow, to ask him if he still wants her to. It's something I've been thinking about since Tseng's ravings about Rufus. What if he _was_ still alive? What would I do? What would become of Cloud, the one I'm supposed to save?

But only one question leaves my lips when I'm buried deep inside of him, his legs wrapped around my back and his fingers digging hard into my shoulders. Maybe it's irrelevant, maybe I don't know how I want him to answer, maybe I hate to admit that I even care.

" Does it hurt?" I ask, my nose touching his. He opens his eyes, their mako glow blurred by tears.

" Yeah," he says in a throaty whisper. " But don't stop."

It's his words that finally send me over the edge, and I bury what might have been a scream in his shoulder, pressing my face to his skin, which is soft from bathwater just like it was on the day I pulled him out of there, the day I saved him.

He groans as I slide out of him, and I reach down to finish him off, surprised that it only takes a few sloppy gropes before my stomach is hot and sticky with his come. He whimpers happily when he finishes, and I barely have time to wipe myself clean with the edge of the sheet before he smashes himself against my chest, trembling slightly. I put my arms around his shoulders and try to steady my breathing, not knowing what to say or do now. I feel a little guilty and strange, but Cloud only reaches up to my shoulders, pressing at the twisted muscles there.

" Where are the other Turks?" he asks, his voice muffled against my skin.

" Why, you want me to send the next one in?"

He jams his fingers into a tight spot between my neck and shoulder and I jerk in pain, glaring at him. He grins at me impishly.

" Just wondering where everyone ended up," he says, putting his hands up to protect his face as I swat at him.

" Elena and Tseng are – whatever," I mutter. Picturing Elena and Tseng behind her bedroom door is about as desirable as imagining my parents having sex. Worse, actually, since I'm closer to the two of them than I ever was to my parents. " Scarlet and Rude are in his room." I shudder a little, not wanting to think about that, either. I can only imagine how they'd all recoil if they found out whose bed I'm lying in.

" I thought they'd be celebrating," he says. I roll onto my stomach and he sits up on an elbow, playing at rubbing my back for a few more seconds before he slips down onto his pillow.

" Turks are only human," I mutter as he brings his forehead to rest against mine. " They have to sleep before they party."

" Maybe we should donate that wine I gave you," he says, sliding an arm across my back.

" Mmm," I grumble, my eyes falling shut. " You trying to bargain for an invite?"

" I did help find him."

" I'm kidding," I assure him, only because I'm starting to fall asleep, getting vulnerable and honest. " I was gonna bring you along anyway. You're my date," I add, laughing to myself.

" Don't ever say that about me again," he says, jabbing me in the side. I look up at him with all the annoyance I can muster.

" It's just not the right word," he says, shutting his eyes.

" Oh."

Somehow I don't think that's the entirety of our problem, the fact that there doesn't exist a word in any language I know of that could adequately describe the two of us, our relation to each other. But I don't press the issue, too damn tired to bother. It seems that I'm always exhausted in his presence, even when I'm not drinking, which I haven't had the opportunity to do very much of these days. Maybe that's why I've been fooling around with him: I needed a new addiction, a replacement drug to get me through the days. I laugh to myself, wondering how he'd feel about that particular label. But if he's the drug that makes me the addict, far less powerful and prone to enslavement. Maybe it works both ways, I think hopefully as I fall asleep, his breath on my cheek, the tremble finally leaving his hand. It goes steady on my back as he slips into sleep, and when it does I let myself doze off at last, knowing he's okay.

* * *

I come out of a troubling dream that I can't quite remember in a jerk, sitting up in Cloud's bed, my eyes darting around the room. Someone knocks on the apartment's door and I curse, my heart slamming against my ribcage. Climbing out of the bed and stumbling into my pants, I'm glad that the nightmare I just had is already fuzzy and fading, and I shake the last snatches of it from my mind like lit matches, going for the door while Cloud sleeps on, oblivious.

When I open it I find Tifa standing on the other side, looking ragged and far beyond tired, dark circles under eyes that widen significantly when she sees me. She glances around as if making sure that she's come to the right door, and then looks back, takes a giant breath, lets her shoulders sink down slowly.

" Well, that was fast," she mutters.

" You're about a week behind, sister." It takes her a moment to process what I've said, and I wait for her to call me a liar or deck me in unfiltered fury, hoping for the former. But she only stands there, swaying a little, maybe too worn out to even be very surprised.

" I came to apologize to him," she tells me after a prolonged silence.

" He's asleep," I tell her, and I have to literally bite down on my tongue to keep it from letting loose any innuendo about how I tired him out.

" That's good, I guess," she murmurs, staring blankly at my chest. " He needs his rest."

" You look like you could use a few winks yourself."

" Reeve's kept me up all morning," she says, rubbing at her face. " He's coming down off his pain meds, and he's been making plans for Tseng's homecoming party like mad."

" Plans? Like what? I figured the Turks would just get rollicking drunk and pass out on the floor somewhere. What more does he want?"

" Well, he wants to be included, for one thing," she says, giving me a dark look. " He was the one who organized the search for Tseng, after all. And – oh, I don't know. He's turned it into this big event. I think it's helping him keep his mind off the pain from his injury. And he likes to plan things."

" You don't say," I mutter dryly.

" Is Cloud still upset with me?" she asks, hands on her hips.

" Hasn't mentioned it," I tell her with a shrug, and she shrinks a little.

" I don't mean to treat him like a child," she says, shaking her head. " It's just that ever since Aeris died, it's all been on me . . . I was so worried he'd completely lose it."

" He did," I remind her. " I seem to recall pulling him out of bloody bathwater not too long ago. It was _lost_, Tifa, and there was nothing you could do about it."

" But you could?" she says, glaring at me. " It's ridiculous," she adds in a hiss, looking away.

" What do you want me to say?" I grumble, throwing out my hands.

" I guess I just want someone to explain all of this to me," she says, looking at me with desperation.

" Tifa, when was the last time anything even remotely explainable happened to any of us?" I ask. " Tseng was dead, now he's not. The world ended when a lab experiment gone wrong threw a Meteor our way, only it didn't. I have _short hair_. Nothing makes any goddamn sense anymore, so just get used to it."

" That was profound," she mutters, rolling her eyes.

" I thought so."

" Well," she says. " I suppose I'll see both of you at the party. It's happening in the quad outside in about an hour."

" We'll bring wine."

She laughs and puts a hand to her forehead.

" I'm serious!" I call as she's walking off.

" Right," she says, shaking her head. " I get it, Reno."

* * *

Cloud and I cart the boxes of wine out to the quad around sundown, and there are already a fair number of people gathered there. Reeve is limping around on crutches, shouting orders at people as tables are set up around the edges of the stone courtyard. Elena is walking around the perimeter lighting torches that have been stuck in sand-filled buckets, and the guest of honor is sitting in a folding chair near the back of the building, watching the whole scene with his usual detached amusement. I take a bottle of wine out of one of the crates and walk over to hand it to Tseng, who frowns at it with curiosity, looking up at me and then over my shoulder. I turn to see Cloud hovering timidly behind me, hands in his pockets.

" Wine?" Tseng says, examining the label. " Red wine, and a good one by the looks of it. Reno, I'm surprised. This doesn't really seem like your taste."

" Cloud found it in a church," I tell him, flicking my head back toward him. " And it's not like I've never had wine before," I add, insulted.

" Yes, I seem to remember an evening in Junon when all you could find to drink after midnight was a bottle of plum wine." He glances back at Cloud, and I feel a little defensive on his behalf, as if I want to step in front of him.

" Thank you, Cloud," he says, lifting the bottle a little. " I appreciate the gift."

" Sure," Cloud mutters.

" I don't suppose you brought an opener," Tseng asks me, with a look like he already knows the answer.

" Er. No."

" That's alright," he says with a grin, reaching into his pocket. " I learned how to open wine bottles with a knife long ago."

" Part of the Turk training?" Cloud says, in a friendly manner, I think. Tseng looks up at him, holding the bottle with his pocket knife stuck into the cork.

" Heh, right," I say, looking back at Cloud a little anxiously. He shrugs.

" Well, what can I say," Tseng says evenly, twisting the cork until he's pulled it out clean. " Turks do have a reputation for drinking. Don't look at me, though," he says, tipping the bottle in my direction. " You can thank your friend here for starting that tradition."

" As if Rude didn't have anything to do with it!" I say indignantly, not sure how I should take his reference to me as Cloud's friend.

" The rest of us happily followed your lead, I'll admit," he says with a grin, taking a drink. He raises his eyebrows a bit, nods to himself.

" Not bad." He offers the bottle to Cloud. I watch a little nervously as he takes it and drinks, hoping this is some kind of peace offering. When he hands the bottle to me he's got a purple stain on his bottom lip, and I grin at him.

" Betcha never thought you'd be drinking with a member of Avalanche," I say to Tseng, wanting to address the tension somehow. I tip the bottle back and take three sizeable gulps before I look back for his answer.

" I had nothing personal against Avalanche," he says unconvincingly, taking the bottle back from me. " Only my orders."

" Excuse me," Cloud says a little gruffly, walking off toward the tables where Tifa and Elena are laying out plates of food. I watch him go, my hopes sinking, and then look back to Tseng.

" Doesn't really seem like your taste," he says again, now with a wicked smile. " Though I suppose you've always had a thing for blond hair."

" Well – so do you!" I blurt out, embarrassed. " Elena's blond."

He only laughs, drinks again.

" And speaking of blonds," I say, lowering my voice. " Have you – uh. Come to terms with the fact that Rufus is . . . gone?"

" Obviously you have," he says without hesitation, and I feel hot anger filling me like a floodtide. I glare down at him, almost having forgotten how easily he can infuriate me.

" When you talked to Scarlet you sure as shit didn't throw your little theory in her face," I say in a hiss. " I thought that meant—"  
" I'm keeping an open mind about it," he says, offering me the bottle again. " Let's just leave it at that for now, shall we?"

I stare at the wine for a moment before taking it from him and drinking. Suddenly I wish Cloud and I had kept it for ourselves, that I could sit on his bed drinking it with him and watching his lips turn purple in peace. This is never going to work, but I don't want to give up my friends, and I sure as shit couldn't give him up if I tried. I feel like giving up entirely as I watch the darkening courtyard fill with people. As they arrive I can easily place them each of them on one of two distinct sides: the ones who were proven right at the end of all things, and those of us who came up empty handed when Shinra was exposed for what it was.

" Listen," Tseng says, rising from his seat and putting a hand on my shoulder. " It's my first day back and I still feel a bit like this is all a dream. You probably shouldn't expect me to have too many answers just yet."

" But you always had them before," I mutter listlessly, finding Cloud amongst the crowd. He's standing across the courtyard and taking a plate of food from Tifa. She pats his cheek and he gives her hair a friendly tug.

" Baby," Tseng says with uncharacteristic flippancy, clapping me on the shoulder. " Things change." With that he walks off toward the food tables himself, leaving me standing with the bottle of wine in my hand. If it was a peace offering, maybe he's just not ready to take it yet, or at least not willing to hold onto it for very long. I follow him over, drawn by the scent of the food Reeve has collected for the party. It's a pretty good spread, with a few pizzas like the one Tifa gave us before we left for the jungle, and even some pork and beef brought in from God knows where. I stand around the tables with the rest of the hungry Reconstruction workers, all of us eating as much we can before the food quickly disappears. When it does, Tifa starts lining up the bottles of wine on the table, and Rude, who is already wasted, brings down his secret stash.

" Hey, those are ours!" Yuffie protests, examining one of the liquor bottles he's placed on the table.

" Eh, what do you care?" Scarlet asks, hanging on Rude's shoulder as he lines them up lovingly. " You don't even drink."

" But we were gonna sell them!" she pouts. " Or trade them at least."

" They're for Tseng," Rude slurs, wagging a finger at her.

" Yeah, for Tseng," I mutter with a grin, grabbing a bottle of rum and taking a long drink. Yuffie glares at me and huffs away.

" Reno, there are cups," Elena says gently, pushing one into my hand.

" Ah. So there are."

The rest of the night more or less consists of all us getting progressively drunker. At one point some people I don't recognize set up a band in the right corner of the courtyard, consisting of a trombone, some bagpipes, two guitars and a slightly busted up xylophone. While I'd normally be heckling such a motley crew, after a fair amount of rum I'm practically singing along.

Cloud hangs at my side for most of the night, the gap between us closing as he continues to sip from a cup containing vodka and some of the cherry pop he got from Yuffie. By midnight, when all but the most familiar of the crowd has departed, he's sitting beside me on one of the now empty food tables and leaning against my arm, drunkenly laughing at Reeve, who is demanding a speech from Tseng.

" C'mon, what's it like to come back from the dead?" he asks with a manic grin, wobbling on his crutches. Tifa stands at the ready, a bit giggly herself, but ready to catch him when he starts to tumble forward.

" You very nearly did so yourself, just this morning," Tseng says. A dignified drunk as always, he's sitting with Elena in his lap and a bottle of cheap sake in his hand. Elena fell asleep an hour ago, and she's dozing on his shoulder.

" That doesn't count," Reeve says with a wave of his hand, tottering forward into Tifa's arms. He grins at her when she catches him, momentarily forgetting his campaign to wring a speech out of Tseng.

" You should get to bed," she says, laughing.

" Offering to tuck him in, then?" I call out to her, and she gives me a cautionary look as Cloud punches my shoulder.

" Don't tease her," he says, close to my ear.

" So I guess the two of you made up?" I ask, with poorly concealed annoyance. He only shrugs and smiles.

" Try this," he says, smashing his cup clumsily against my cheek.

" Get your pansy cocktail away from me."

He laughs, sloshing some of it onto my shirt as he does, and I make like I'm going to pound him, pretending to pour my drink over his head as he ducks.

" What's going on over here?" Rude roars with mock concern, stumbling over toward us. He's got a nearly empty bottle of gin in his hand, and I feel sympathy hangover pains just looking at him.

" I thought you two were friends now," he slurs, shoving my shoulder and then Cloud's, spilling more of his drink on my shirt as he does.

" Oh, I guess he's tolerable," I mumble, looking down at my stained shirt with hazy distress.

" S'funny," Rude says, falling against me on the table. " All of us together now. S'funny, dontcha think, Reno?"

" Sure, sure," I mutter. " Where's Scarlet?" I ask, glancing over at Tseng. I'm not surprised to find that he's watching Rude, Cloud and I with interest, even as he calmly smoothes Elena's hair.

" She passed out upstairs," he says, nodding toward the dormitory.

" Shinra's were always a bunch of lightweights," I say with a laugh, drinking. I think of Rufus, how he would get loose-lipped after a few martinis. It was the only reason I ever learned anything about his mother, a favorite subject of his when he was drunk.

I feel a little worn out myself, and start to tell Rude so when I see someone moving along the dark edges of the courtyard, beyond the waning torches. Cloud must see it, too, because he tenses up beside me. I glance at his back and am more than a little dismayed to notice that he doesn't have his buster sword with him. I look back at the person I thought I saw sneaking in the shadows, and find that there are three intruders now, keeping their distance but watching our little gathering with interest. Having a look around at the remaining party members, I assess our arsenal: Barrett is still here, gun arm and all, though he's pretty wasted, standing with Cid and Shera and laughing uproariously about something. Tifa's got her meat hooks of course, though they're occupied with Reeve, a burden that she doesn't seem to mind too terribly as she giggles against his shoulder, acting as a stand-in for his crutches. Rude and Tseng are fairly good with their fists, too, but Tseng is still weak from his ordeal and Rude has just passed out on the table beside me.

" Is he alright?" Tseng asks me with a laugh, nodding to Rude as the first scrape of a footstep is heard on the boundaries of the quad. Not everyone notices the approaching men: the trombonist and one of the guitar players are still jamming away in the corner. But Cloud and I hop off the table, and Tseng turns in his chair, drawing Elena closer to him when he spots the three mangy looking fellows who are crashing our little party. I only recognize one of them: his name is Andrew and he ran with one of the Sector Four gangs back before I got recruited into the Turks, but I haven't seen him since and there's no telling who he's affiliated with now. Cloud steps in front of me, and I try not to resent him for it, fail, and push around him to confront the interlopers.

" Nice setup you got here," one of them says before any of us can speak. The musicians fall silent and everyone turns to look at them now.

" We heard you had food," Andrew says with dull malice, his eyes scanning the empty tables behind us.

" That ain't no business of yours," Barrett says gruffly, stepping forward. He wavers a little on his feet, and I pray that he's sober enough to fight if he needs to. He pulls his gun arm out in front of him, not pointing it at anyone yet, but letting them know it's there.

" You best be moving along," he says.

" Ain't you all supposed to be some kind of humanitarian outfit?" the third man asks, stepping closer. I glance at their hips as they move into the light, and see that they're all carrying guns.

" Yeah, it don't seem right, you charitable types having yourself a little feast while the rest of us sad sacks starve," Andrew says.

" You ain't starving," Barrett barks. " Now back the fuck off."

" We'll gladly leave if we can take a few of them bottles with us," the first man says, nodding to the remains of the booze supply.

" You're not taking shit," I tell him, trying to look menacing and wishing I had something more than a plastic cup full of rum to threaten with.

" Maybe we should just take you, Reno," Andrew says with a sadistic smile. " There's a price on your head that could get us a year's worth of booze."

" As if Artie's got any money," I say with a scoff, my pulse quickening.

" There's no such thing as money anymore," Andrew sneers. " What Artie's got is influence, and he's influenced a hell of a lot of us that it'd work in our favor if we brought you to him."

" I'm not afraid of that jackass," I lie.

" Why don't you tell him that to his face," Andrew says, walking toward me and reaching for his gun. I can feel Cloud's alarm like an electric charge, and I don't know if I should be comforted or concerned, considering that he's unarmed.

Before I can decide, a bottle comes soaring through the air, shattering against Andrew's forehead. He curses and stumbles backward, giving Barrett enough time to raise his gun-arm and cock it menacingly.

" I said back off!" he screams, and the thugs scramble away, dragging Andrew with them. I turn around to see Rude sitting up on the table and glaring at them as they go. The courtyard fills with the scent of spilled gin.

" Thanks," I shout back to him. He shrugs.

" They woke me up," he says with a wink.

" Reno, what did they want with you?" Tifa asks predictably, sobering and helping Reeve back onto his crutches.

" Old business," I tell her dismissively, glancing at Cloud. " Ancient history."

The party breaks up after that, everyone staggering inside as if we've just woken from a deep sleep, from a pleasant and surreal dream we were having. I head up the stairs with Rude and Tseng, who carries Elena in his arms. Cloud follows me, and I wait with foggy curiosity to see if he'll come to my room. When we reach the tenth floor he joins us, the other Avalanche members heading up to the top. Maybe he's just too drunk to care, I think cautiously as he walks into our apartment behind me. When the four of us are inside I shut the door and lock it, sighing.

" Wait a moment, Reno," Tseng says as I'm heading for my room with Cloud. " I want to talk to you." I feel a familiar dread rise through me, as though I'm back in Shinra Tower waiting to hear about the demerits I've earned and how disappointed he is in me. I wonder if it has anything to do with Cloud as I watch him disappear into my bedroom. Tseng goes into Elena's room and sets her down gently on the bed, then comes back out into the kitchen, shutting her door behind him.

" She slept through the whole thing," he says with a little laugh.

" I don't think she got more than an hour of sleep that whole week when we were looking for you," I mumble.

" Hmm." He slides his hands into his pockets, sighs.

" What did those men want with you? Who is this Artie person?"

" Remember that Sector Seven job?" I mutter, leaning against the kitchen table. He nods. " His brother was one of the kids killed on the pillar before it blew up. A member of Avalanche."

" I assume Cloud has forgiven you for the murder, though?" Tseng asks suggestively, glancing back at my room.

" He didn't like the guy too well," I mumble, feeling defeated.

" You sure can pick them."

" Quit treating me like I'm betraying Rufus!" I whisper in an angry hiss, standing. " He's dead. I saw it all happen, and this is the first time in months that I've had anything but the memory of that day, of how I failed him."

I didn't mean to admit so much, but I am drunk, though the pleasant haze of inebriation is quickly morphing into a headache. Tseng is silent for a few moments, his face unreadable.

" If you're right about Rufus, I'm the one who failed him."

" There wasn't much you could have done," I tell him, narrowing my eyes. " You were half-dead in the jungle somewhere. I was the one who was there that day. I was the one who – went away when he asked me to."

" Don't beat yourself up about it," he mutters. " You were always willing to do anything he asked."

" I don't want to talk about this anymore," I say in a huff, turning for my room.

" It was the reason I worried about you," he calls as I go, stopping me. " You were always too willing to bend to his whims, and his choices weren't always wise, for you or for himself."

" I knew that," I insist, my back to him. " I just didn't care."

" My point," he says sharply, " Is that I don't care where your affections lie so much as your loyalties. At least with Rufus I always knew he had Shinra's welfare in mind. I don't understand what you're playing at, with one of . . . them."

" There is no Avalanche anymore, and no Shinra," I say, remembering Reeve's speech when we arrived in the jungle. " You're living in the past."

" I think I can be forgiven for that," he says with a dark laugh. " And I think you're lying. You felt it when the four of us were together again. The Turks are still alive. And believe me, the members of Avalanche still have their fidelity and ambitions, too."

" What are you saying?" I ask, whirling to face him. " So the Turks live on, so what? Maybe we're alive in the physical sense, but what's our purpose, with Rufus gone?"

" I'm not ready to believe that he's gone yet," Tseng says after a pause.

" Well, get back to me when you are," I snarl, storming off toward my room. " Until then you're just another pain in my ass."

I slam the door behind me when I get inside, standing in place and huffing in anger for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Outside I hear Elena's bedroom door close softly, and for a moment I regret what I said. I've said worse to Tseng in the past, and the fights were always over Rufus. Fuck. Nothing changes.

" Did you hear all of that?" I ask Cloud when he comes into focus, lying on his side in the bed.

" No," he answers, almost certainly a lie. But I'm grateful for it, as I don't want any further discussion about the conversation at the moment. I take off my clothes and fall into bed behind him, pressing my chest against his warm back, pulling him in tight.

" I've got to remember to carry my sword with me from now on," he mumbles absently. I bring my face to the back of his neck, shut my eyes against his skin.

" Thought you were done with fighting," I mutter, pulling the sheets up over our shoulders.

" So did I," he says, and I can't decide if it's regret or pride that I hear in his voice. He reaches down to take my hand in his and squeezes it to his chest. I know he's worried about Artie's gang, and I know I should be, too, but that's not what's on my mind. It's Rufus that I can't stop thinking about, and the idea that he might still be alive.

I can't help but wonder if I'm more afraid of the possibility that he is than all of the rusty knives and sawed off shotguns that Artie and his boys could wield. I've spent most of my days since Weapon attacked missing Rufus, wishing there was even a remote possibility that he survived the attack, but now that Tseng is putting the unlikely notion in my head, I'm traitorously hoping it's not true. I couldn't say why exactly, but I have a feeling that it might have something to do with what Tseng said. He was right about me: I always followed Rufus's orders, jumped at his every beck and call, did what he asked me to.

And I know that if he were to somehow show up again, his first request would be that I give up Cloud. I pull him closer to me, and he strokes my hand with his thumb, probably thinking I'm afraid for my life.

I am, I suppose, but not in the way he suspects.

* * *

I have only one or two distinct memories of my mother. She left when I was young, and I don't exactly dwell on my childhood very often. For the most part I remember her as a sort of softly outlined blur, a pretty woman with fiery hair who always looked out of place in the slums. There are some images that are still clear in my mind, however, like a burlap colored dress she wore, which came to her knees and had two large pockets on the skirt. She used to come home from her part time job at the corner store and pull pieces of candy she'd stolen from her employer out of those pockets, handing them to me without a smile, a finger over her lips to signal that I shouldn't tell my father.

The memory of her that has stayed with me more than any other is waking up in my room, two nights before she walked out on us for good, and finding her sitting in a chair in the far corner, her rail thin legs pulled up to her chest. She wasn't looking at me, but seemed to know when I had woken, as she started speaking, staring off into space and hugging her legs closer.

" Beware the happy lulls, baby," she'd said in a whisper. I could hear my father ranting out in the common area of our tiny house, beer bottles clinking together, something crashing to the floor. I knew she was upset because she had recently come into some money. At the time I thought she'd inherited it from some distant relative, now I wonder if she hadn't just picked up a more lucrative career. She was a beautiful woman, after all, and especially so in the company of the hags and stringy teenage mothers who filled the slums. If that was the case I can hardly judge her for it, as I'm no stranger to the kind of financial desperation that turns you to tricks.

My father, of course, found out about the money and took it to Gold Saucer, to the tracks, thinking he could make us rich. He couldn't.

I watched her for a long time that night, memorizing the look of her as if I already knew she was as good as gone. She finally looked back at one point, shaking her head slowly.

" Just when you think you've finally worked things out," she said in a shaky whisper. " That's when it happens."

I wasn't sure what 'it' was, but I knew it wasn't good.

Fifteen years later, I'm waking from a sleep plagued with dreams about Rufus, so shaken by nightmare visions of his ghost that I swear I can smell his cologne on the air, when I find it – my _it _– lying on the floor near my bedroom door. It comes to me in the form of a slightly crumpled piece of paper, folded once, white and dignified with half a shoe print on its left corner. It must have been stuck in the door last night, I think, reaching down to pick it up. My hand is shaking when I open it, recognizing it at once as the thing my mother had warned me about that night, as the end of my false sense of security.

The note reads simply: _Warehouse behind the church at dusk_.

The penmanship is neat, the paper is fine. Only Rufus could procure good stationary after the end times. Even as a zombie he has class.

I don't know how I feel about the message, but when I hear Cloud stirring on the bed behind me I don't hesitate to crumple the note into my fist, hiding it from him. He moans and rolls over, his hand sliding around on the bed, looking for me. I don't even know why I'm up; I feel as if I'm sleepwalking. Maybe Rufus was just here, I think with strange excitement. I walk backwards into the bathroom and stuff the note into the medicine cabinet amongst the few toiletries I brought from Kalm: some shaving cream, a pair of nail clippers and an economy size bottle of lube, a special kind Rufus used to order from an organic pharmaceutical company run out of Mideel. I smile at the stuff, just now remembering it's there, and I realize with sadness that I don't know if I'm smiling because it reminds me of Rufus or because I want to take it back to bed with Cloud. I shut the cabinet and let out my breath, wishing I could get my heart to stop racing.

" Reno?" Cloud mumbles from the other room. I turn and hurry back to him guiltily, find him lying on his stomach and hugging my pillow. I slide onto his back and rest my cheek between his shoulder blades, putting my arms around him. He laughs a little, reaching back to pat my butt.

_Just when you think you've finally worked things out_. I wish I could relax, wish I could calm down. I should be savoring the moment, glad that the Reconstruction management team is too hungover to rouse me to work this morning. But I'm already wishing for dusk.

" You sleep okay?" he mumbles, yawning.

" I guess," I mutter. " I've got a headache." He turns underneath me, and I pick myself up so he can roll over. When I settle down onto him again our midsections meet with a moist heat that makes my mind wander back to the bottle in the medicine cabinet for a happy moment.

Cloud reaches up and puts a hand on my forehead, as if he might cure my headache this way. I bend down to kiss him, sighing into his mouth, my lips trembling. He still tastes like cherry pop.

" You okay?" he asks, reaching up to push my wild hair off my forehead.

" Headache," I remind him in a grumble, rolling onto my side. He gets out of bed and I watch him dress, glad for the distance between us, though it makes me feel achy and hollow. I'm not sure who I'm betraying anymore, and I can't stop thinking of Rufus when I touch him, as if he's watching us from the corner, amused.

Cloud goes out into the apartment and comes back with a glass of water and a couple of biscuits. When he opens and closes the door I can hear noises out in the kitchen, and smell something sweet and floury.

" Elena made fresh ones," he says cheerfully, handing me a biscuit as I sit up in bed. " I brought you some of these, too," he adds, dropping a couple of aspirin into my palm.

" I usually take five at a time," I say, popping them in my mouth. " But thanks."

" Sorry, I forgot only wimps take the recommended dosage," he says, rolling his eyes and taking a bite of his biscuit. I wash the pills down with the water he brought and push his shoulder.

" Ooh, Reno, you're such a painkiller rebel," he says in a mocking voice, making a stupid face and goggling at the ceiling in imitation of being impressed, his cheeks full.

" Don't you forget it," I say, smiling and wishing I could snuff out the tight feeling in my stomach, as if any moment a blast like the one that incinerated Rufus's office is going to come sailing through the window. As if I have advance knowledge of the attack and I'm not warning him, to save my own ass, somehow. But I tell myself that it's really him I'm sparing as I eat the rest of my breakfast in silence. After all, I'm not sure exactly what the note I received means. I could be wrong.

But since I found it on the floor I feel like I should have known all along, like Tseng has, that Rufus can't be dead. Suddenly I feel him here, real and omnipresent as if he was hovering just outside the window, waiting to be let in. I glance over at the dirty pane just to make sure I'm wrong, and feel relieved and disappointed when I only see the late morning sun.

" Is Tseng up yet?" I ask Cloud, wiping crumbs off my lap and not meeting his eyes.

" I didn't see him out there," he says.

" Alright. I'll be right back." I kiss him quickly on his forehead and get dressed, hunting through the piles of clothes on my floor for a few minutes before I come to a cleanish t-shirt. When I'm decent I head out into the kitchen, shutting him in the room as I go.

" Hey," I say, walking to Elena. She's standing at the stove, sliding hot biscuits off a baking sheet and onto a plate. She grins at me, her face brighter than I've seen it in months.

" Reno, are you alright?" she asks, touching my arm when I come to stand beside her. " Cloud said you had a headache."

" I'm fine."

" Isn't he darling, hunting after aspirin for you?" she says in a whispered squeak, laughing a little. I turn bright red and mutter vague agreement under my breath.

" Is Tseng still asleep?" I ask, glancing toward her bedroom. The door is open and I can't see anyone inside.

" No, he got up early to go have a walk around the city," she says, taking the plate of biscuits to the table. " He should be back soon."

" What's he doing walking around by himself when he's barely mobile?" I grumble, folding my arms over my chest.

" He needs the practice, and he's not barely mobile," Elena says. " Tseng can take care of himself."

" What, and I can't?" I bark without thinking. She looks at me with surprise.

" Of – of course you can. Reno, what's wrong?"

" Nothing, forget it," I grumble, falling into a seat at the table. She sits down across from me, cautiously.

" Are you worried about those men who came to the party last night?" she asks quietly. " Tseng told me about it this morning. He said they were looking for retribution for something that happened in Sector Seven."

" Remember the pillar that fell?" I ask her, looking at my hands.

" Yes. I heard Avalanche was behind it. Why would they—"

" Shinra did it," I mutter. " Well. Rude and I did it, to be precise."

She's quiet for a moment.

" That was when I was brought up to the Turks," she reminds me, and I nod. " Because you were hurt."

" Funny," I say with a dark scoff. " He's the one who put me out of commission." I flick my head back toward my bedroom, implicating Cloud. " I've still got the scar," I murmur, almost talking to myself now. I reach down under my t-shirt and feel around until I find it, a thin slash along my left side.

" Reno, are you sure you're alright?" she asks softly. Before I can answer the front door opens, and I jump up in nervous surprise when Tseng walks in.

" Relax, it's just me," he says merrily. He's got a newspaper tucked under his arm.

" Where in the hell did you get that?" I ask when he lays it on the table. It's the today's edition of the Kalm Tribune.

" Oh, I have my sources," he says vaguely, and I sit down again, looking at the paper gloomily. Leave it to Tseng to come back to a ruined Midgar after being dead for months and immediately find better connections than any of us have in all our time here.

" These smell delicious," he tells Elena, taking a few biscuits from the plate.

" I don't have any jam," she says regretfully.

" Hmm. I'll see what I can do about that," he promises, and she beams.

Unable to stand the two of them and their sunny dispositions any longer, I rise from the table with a groan. I had intended to tell Tseng about the note I found, but now I've thought better of it. Maybe it wouldn't hurt for me to have the upper hand for once, if only for a little while.

I go back into my bedroom and find Cloud tossing my dirty clothes into piles, a few pairs of pants folded neatly at the end of the bed, which he has carefully made up. He looks up at me with embarrassment when I enter, as if I've caught him digging through my underwear drawer.

" Well, there's nothing else to do," he grumbles. I laugh and tackle him from behind, kissing his neck until he squirms and protests.

I know I'm crazy to even be curious. I know he'd do nothing but make me happy for the rest of my life.

And yet.

* * *

The day seems to last for weeks, and by the time the sun begins to sink I'm antsy and tense, sitting downstairs in the lobby and trying to take my mind off of things by playing cards with Rude. It isn't working; I'm losing badly and I'm happy that I haven't got anything to bet, because if I did I'd be dead broke by now. Rude is enjoying it anyway, laughing it up as he wins hand after hand, never guessing for a moment that it's my distraction and not his own brilliance that is responsible for his victories.

We've all taken the day off to recover after the trip to the jungle, and, more importantly, after the drunken revelry at Tseng's homecoming party. Across the lobby Cloud and Reeve are turning a jump rope for Barrett's daughter Marlene, talking about plans for the city over her head as she skips, giggling.

" What about the church?" I hear Cloud ask at one point. " The one in Sector Five."

" We can restore it," Reeve tells him with sympathy. " We can even . . . name it after her, if you like."

" It's up to you," Cloud mumbles, self-conscious.

" The flower girl's church," Marlene says in a singsong voice. " My friend Janie saw her there the other day."

I glance over to see Reeve looking at Cloud with concern, but he doesn't meet his eyes. A sharp chill moves across my skin as I remember the last time I was in the church, when Cloud was insisting that he'd seen her there, even after she died.

" No, that must have been someone else, doll," Reeve says uncertainly.

" It was her," Marlene insists innocently, skipping. " She's the only one who can make the flowers grow there."

Having heard enough, with ghosts of my own crowding my brain as they seep back into the world of the living, I stand abruptly from the table, throwing my cards down and walking toward the front doors.

" Hey!" Rude calls. " Where are you going? Do you forfeit?"

" Congratulations, Rude, you win again," I call glumly over my shoulder as I walk away. I can hear Marlene stop jumping, and I know that it means Cloud is headed in my direction. I feel panic grip my chest for a moment, knowing he can't come with me. The sky outside has started to go pinkish as the sun sinks, illuminating the dust that hangs over the ruined city. I change direction and start to head for the stairs that lead up toward the apartments.

" Where are you going?" Cloud asks, following me onto the landing. I turn back to him and take a deep breath.

" That didn't bother you, did it?" I ask cautiously. " What the kid said?"

" She – no," he says haltingly, looking down at his shoes.

" I'm gonna go take a shower," I lie, my heart hammering. " I'll be back in a minute," I add quickly, letting him know he's not welcome to join me.

" Oh, alright," he says. He seems to buy it, and I suppose he's got no reason no to. Absurdly, I haven't lied to him yet, and he does seem a little preoccupied with what Marlene said about Aeris, no matter how he tries to deny it. I watch him walk back toward Reeve before hurrying up the stairs.

When I get to the second floor I rush through the hall to a fire exit that leads to the back of the building. I slip out into the thick air and inhale deeply, surveying the grounds. No one seems to be around, so I jog down the metal staircase and into the quad, where the remains of Tseng's party are mostly cleaned up. I catch the faint smell of gin as I pass through the stone courtyard, and steel myself when I remember the events of the night before, reaching into my pocket to touch my taser for reassurance. I wanted to bring my nightstick along: Rude used to call it my 'cattle prod,' as it can administer an electric shock about ten times as strong as the taser I'm carrying now. But I had to leave it leaning behind the door in my bedroom for fear that Cloud would know what I was about if I carried it out.

I curse to myself as I walk through the dusty streets, people starting to turn down curtains over their makeshift shops and bolt the doors on the rickety housing that still stands along the inner boroughs of the city. I wish for a moment that I didn't have to worry about Cloud hanging over my shoulder, keeping tabs on my every move. I think about the irony of my little quest as I turn back to make sure no one is following me: I'm perturbed by Cloud's interference in my life even as I'm searching out Rufus, who had ruled over my every move with a sense of cool entitlement.

When I reach the warehouse the sky is hot pink above me, like a tacky neon sign glowing over all of Midgar. I take in my breath sharply and look around. People have moved off of the streets now; they weren't safe at night when the city was still alive, and now that it's a ghost town even the once reckless citizens aren't taking any chances. I touch my pants pocket again, feel the shape of the taser there. _Don't be a fucking puss_, I tell myself, tapping at the weapon nervously. _You were a Turk. You owned these streets_.

The past tense of that reality rings in my ears as I reach an open side door on the giant old warehouse. I turn back to look at Aeris's church before I go in, radiant in the pink light, even in its sorry and crumbling state. _If you are there_, I think sourly, _give me a hand, kid_. I laugh at myself as I turn into the darkness of the abandoned warehouse. As if the divine idol would bother to help a loser like me, especially after I've moved in on her man. As if she's actually there. Of course she isn't.

There are no ghosts. They don't exist.

I tell myself this again and again, repeating it in my head like a wild mantra as I creep further into the pitch black warehouse, my feet brushing against debris every few inches. When my eyes finally adjust I see that it's largely empty, save some equipment in the back and a few stacks of paper leftover from when this printing warehouse served as Shinra's main supplier for office materials. I kick at a cart stacked with unused packs of white printer paper, and realize where Rufus got his nice stationary from.

" Rufus?" I call into the darkness, my voice echoing eerily off the walls of the place. I hear the scrape of a footstep and my heart leaps into my throat, trying to escape while it can.

" Hear that, boys?" drawls a cold voice that I instantly recognize.

" He's looking for his president," Artie says, laughing wickedly as he walks into plain sight, coming out from behind a huge old printing press. I start to back away and hear muted chuckles behind me, and in the back corner of the warehouse the door I came in through slams shut.

" I always knew you were fucked up, Reno," Artie growls as he comes to face me, lighting a match so that I can see his sneering face. " But I thought you were at least smart enough to realize that fucker's been dead for months now."

" You've got me all wrong," I say, trying to beat away the shake in my voice. I can't, so I give over to it, figuring my reputation is worthless anyway, since I'm as good as dead. There are at least six of them, probably more.

" I was looking for another Rufus, see—" I start, a kind of pointless joke, and someone shoves me hard from behind. I fall toward Artie and he decks me, sending me reeling backward again. I hear them all laugh as I stumble against a sour smelling guy who holds my arms behind me.

" My brother was lucky," Artie says, spitting. " Isla told me he died quick that night." He steps closer to me, takes my chin in his dirty hand. " You ain't that lucky, Reno," he says with a smug little smile, all of his thugs laughing stupidly.

" He might feel pretty lucky," a guy whose name I can't remember but whose scarred face I recognize says, stepping forward toward the light of the match and putting his hands on his belt buckle. " You remember what Reno did best before the Raptors picked his sorry ass up. This might as well be his dream come true, getting jumped by a buncha well-hung fellas like us." He gives me a sick smile and toys with his belt buckle suggestively.

" You're not really my type," I say weakly, cursing my body to hell for shaking uncontrollably in the grip of the thug who's holding me. " I don't really go for dudes whose faces are indistinguishable from their asses in sight and smell."

I get the punch to the face that I expected, and it lands hard against the side of my nose, blood spattering out onto my shirt.

" It's your ass you need to worry about, you little shit," he says, spitting on me.

" Do whatever you want with him," Artie mumbles. " Just make sure he's alive when I finish him off."

The guy who was holding my arms drops me to the ground, knowing I'm not going anywhere at this point. I fall onto my hands and knees and cough, wipe a mass of blood from my face. I hear what might be zippers going down or knives being unsheathed; there's a ringing in my ears, and maybe at this point I don't even want to know what's coming. Interestingly, this was always the way I assumed I would die. On a dirty floor, after being sliced up and used until I'm begging for it, on the receiving end of some asshole's fist. I envy Rufus the upper class death he surely expected for himself, alone and dignified in his ivory tower, beloved by the people all the way up until the moment that his damning papers were posthumously published in the Midgar Times.

It figures that I'd die like this only because I thought I could get close to someone like that, thought I could reclaim him after I'd lost my chance to reap the rewards of someone else's power. After I'd walked away from real happiness, ashamed most of all of the knowledge that I didn't deserve it, that if not this, I would have ruined it some other way.

I think about Cloud, even as they kick me in the ribs, the individuals indistinguishable except for the guy who seems determined to fuck me, arguing with someone who is standing in his way, slashing my shirt to shreds with a razor blade. Still I think about Cloud, about how he'll find out, how he'll think it was his fault. It's the worst bit of all of this; to hell with my humiliating demise, his is the real tragedy. I wonder if there is anyone left who can save him, if it was really meant to be me, or if I was just another obstacle to the near-martyr's hard won deliverance, to the real light at the end of his tunnel, to the one who wouldn't have walked away.

_That's what you do, Reno_, I think as the man with the belt buckle shoves his friends away and grabs my hips, questing for the hem of my pants. I mindlessly try to crawl forward, but someone steps on my hand and I hear a bone snap.

_That's what you do_. I give in, falling limp. _You walk away, the world falling to pieces behind you. Rufus died for nothing because you did it again, trying to get him back. You walked away and you lost the one you were supposed to save, again, again, again_. No wonder I'm being snuffed out: I'm useless and stupid, stubborn and damned.

The guy grappling with my pants shouts in surprise and stumbles away, and I fall onto my stomach, not wanting to look up to see if the thug who has pushed him aside wants to be first in line to screw me or to scrawl graffiti on my back with his knife. I shut my eyes and wait, but all I hear is their struggle intensifying, and a strangled scream.

" What the—"

" Shit!"

" _Artie_!" someone shrieks desperately, and I feel something hot and wet on my back. I shudder in disgust and wonder if I'll get off easy with the lot of them just jerking off on my back, then roll over and realize it's blood that's landed on me. I reach down in terror and try to find the place where they cut me open, but I'm relatively intact, save for a long row of bruises that surely cover one or two cracked ribs. I look up with a wince and see that some kind of melee has started in the darkness, and someone falls backward and lands hard on my lap, making me scream in pain as he sinks into a particularly sore place on my leg.

Suddenly a blade sails through the air in front of me, and in the dark purple light that comes in from the small windows near the warehouse's ceiling I can just make out the head of the guy in my lap leaving his body and sailing off to the right.

" Fuck!" I scream, pushing his lifeless body off of me and scrambling madly to my feet. But before I can get anywhere I feel a boot on the small of my back, and I'm falling over again, my hand landing in a puddle of blood.

" What the hell's going on?" Artie grunts, lighting another match. I look up when the small flame has illuminated the place somewhat, and see the remains of the five men he brought with him lying on the warehouse floor, in pieces. One of them moans and lifts his head, and Cloud, who is standing over him with his buster sword soaked in blood, brings the weapon down through the man's neck, finishing him with his eyes still locked on Artie.

" You crazy fuck!" Artie screams, backing up and tripping a little as he does, stunned and panicked. " How did you . . .!" The light from the match is shaking wildly as Cloud walks toward him with a steady gait, and Artie fumbles hopelessly with his gun, trying to pull it from the holster on his hip.

" Your brother was a good person," Cloud says, in a hollow voice I don't recognize. He lifts his buster sword and puts it through Artie's chest with ease, and I stare up at the two of from the ground with stark disbelief, frozen as if in a dream.

" But you were both morons," Cloud tells him as he yanks the sword out. Artie falls face first to the ground, already gone.

The match goes out with Artie, and I sit in the darkness, shaking and waiting for something to happen, unable to move not so much from my injuries as from shock. I hear the buster sword being sheathed and Cloud reaches down, grabbing my arm and pulling me up.

" Are you alright?" he asks me without emotion, his face close to mine in the darkness.

" Let's go, let's go, let's go, please," I stutter madly, and he walks toward the warehouse door, pulling me along. There's not too much physically wrong with my legs, really, but I still can't get them to work properly until we're outside.

I immediately stagger over to the side of the building and throw up. Cloud watches in silence as I empty the entire contents of my stomach, groaning and wiping blood from my face as I do. When I'm done he helps me up, and we walk away from the warehouse without speaking. I chew on my bottom lip, trying to figure out how I'm still alive. Maybe I'm hallucinating. I look up at Aeris's church as we pass it and, without thinking, fall to my knees. Cloud turns back to me when he hears my footsteps stop.

I stare up at the shabby building, the stained glass windows dark. The sun is gone now, Midgar's streets are empty and the church is silent as I gaze at it in breathless reverence.

" What are you doing?" Cloud asks, and for the first time since I heard him speak inside I detect a hint of emotion in his voice, though I can't be sure what it reveals.

" Nothing," I say in a whisper, not wanting to admit that I'm thanking her, that I feel a unnamable faith surging through me as I slowly let myself realize that I'm okay, that I escaped. I want to credit someone, and it can't be Cloud, not yet, because I'm a little afraid to look him in the eye. I've never seen so much blood spilled with so little effort, and in such a short space of time. Though the people he killed were my enemies, I still felt an inexplicable terror as I watched him do it, silent and calculating, as if it was just another chore to tick off the day's list. I guess I didn't realize he had it in him, though I shouldn't be surprised. He had found it in himself to kill Sephiroth, someone he claims to once have loved.

I'm lost in my own whirling mind when I feel him grabbing me, yanking hard on my arm and tugging me to my feet. I protest, my bruised arm stinging as he holds me steady, but he doesn't let up, only turns me to face him, staring at me with a petrifying intensity.

" What's wrong with you?" he asks in a hiss, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed as they bore into mine.

" A number of things, really, including some pretty gnarly bruises that you're squeezing right now—"

" Don't give me any fucking jokes!" he shouts, letting me go and walking away, then back, pacing and running his hands furiously through his hair.

" What the hell are you trying to do to – what are you trying to prove?" he screams, starting to unravel rapidly. Maybe he wasn't so unaffected by what happened, after all.

" I saw that note when I went into the room last night," he says, his eyes wild. " I thought it – I didn't know what it meant, but I was worried you might be meeting up with Artie, trying to prove something—"

" Cloud—" He doesn't know I was trying to find someone else when I left the dorms tonight. Of course he doesn't, how could he? No one else would have instantly assumed that note was from Rufus, not even Tseng. I'm a fucking idiot, and if I had died in there it would have been nothing less than I deserved.

" Just shut up for a second!" he screams. " You don't know – you don't know – all for your stupid pride, you dumb son of a—"

" Listen—"

" No, I don't care!" he yells, walking to me, reaching for me but dropping his hands when he remembers my injuries. He pounds his fists against his legs instead, looking at the ground for a moment as if trying to collect himself. He's got blood on his shirt, his pants, his chin.

" I don't know what – who you're trying to impress," he stammers, looking up at me with naked desperation. " The Turks, me, your old enemies from the slums – I don't give a shit." He shakes his head.

" Cloud—"

" I'm not going to . . .," he stutters, his voice quieter now. " I'm not going to – again – I'm not going to lose someone I . . .,"

He trails off, but it's enough. I pick him up by the arms as if he's the one with the broken bones and bruises, and he looks up at me with watery eyes.

" From now on, if you go somewhere, I'm going, too," he says, steadying himself and standing up straight, wiping quickly at his eyes before looking back to me with a determined frown. " Don't leave without telling me. Don't lie to me. Don't – don't get yourself – hurt again." He runs his tongue over his teeth and tries to keep his composure.

" Them's the rules, huh?" I ask weakly.

" Yeah," he says, sniffing, looking down at my chest. " If you can't accept that, then I can't – do this."

" This?" I mutter. My head is starting to throb violently, and I have to distract myself from the pain by picking on him, even now. It's what I do best, after all.

" You know what I mean," he says before leaning in to kiss me quickly on the side of the nose. It hurts, but I endure it, the pain blooming through me like strange relief.

" Let's go," he says, brushing carefully at my dirty cheek. " We need to get you to the hospital."

" Oh, God, the hospital," I moan, walking along with him back toward the dormitories, stabbing pains in my ribs making me wince with each step. " That makes three times in – what has it been, two weeks? Not even that. You know, I don't think it's a good sign for us."

" Fuck signs," he grumbles darkly. " I'm not at the mercy of anyone's goddamn destiny anymore. Not even yours."

I decide, as we come within sight of the dormitory, that I'm entirely alright with that. For most of my life I've been jerked around by forces indifferent and malicious, and if he wants to take over, wielding a buster sword in the face of whatever fate has planned for me, well, I'll take it. It is, by far, the best offer I've gotten.

* * *

Cloud brings me to one of the doctors on the Reconstruction staff, who assures us that I don't need to go to the hospital. He fits my broken pinky finger with a splint and tells me that my ribs will heal on their own.

" It will hurt to breathe for awhile," he tells me matter of factly. " And unfortunately I don't have any painkillers to give you. But you're not in any danger."

" Hurts to breathe," I mutter with a sigh that feels like a knife to my side. " Check."

" What on earth happened to you two?" the doctor mutters as he's putting away his things. We're in the lobby of the dormitory, in a back corner, and there are a few curious onlookers, but thankfully none of the Avalanche crew or the Turks are among them.

" We got jumped by a gang," Cloud explains quickly, and the doctor gives us an uneasy look.

" Well, best not to wander outside at night," he says before breezing away. Cloud gives me a look.

I open my mouth to tell him the truth about the note, about what I thought it meant and the real reason I wandered into that warehouse alone. But I decide now is not the time, and as he helps me climb ten excruciating flights of stairs I realize there is never going to be a good time to admit to him that I was hoping to find my dead boyfriend, that I thought the note Artie left for me was a love letter from a ghost, an invitation to change the past.

It's Tseng's nonsense that's gotten me so mixed up. As Cloud helps me inside the mercifully empty apartment I resolve never to listen to him again; I never heeded his advice about Rufus in the past, so why start now? Cloud locks the door behind us and we go into my bedroom, take off our bloody clothes and throw them into a heap on the floor. He fills my bathtub with cold water and I sink slowly into it, wincing against the chill. When he climbs in he leans forward to wash my face first, carefully rubbing soap over my darkening bruises.

" I wonder if this will get me out of work this week," I mumble with a laugh that hurts.

" I think you could use a vacation," Cloud says seriously.

When both of us are clean we go for the bed, teeth chattering, and he helps me in first, pulling the covers up over me. I have to lie on my back, my sides too sore to withstand my usual sleeping position. He slips under the blankets and moves over next to me, careful not to touch my skin, as nearly every part of my body is sore. I give him a pitiable look and he reaches toward my face before pulling his hand back warily.

" I don't want to hurt you," he says.

I take his hand and bring it to my face again, pressing it against my cheek. It does hurt, but not too badly, and I need the heat of his touch more than relief from pain right now. He strokes my skin carefully, his thumb moving just under the corner of my eye.

" You did hurt me once," I remind him with a sardonic smile, and he wets his lips, offering no sign that he doesn't remember it as well as I do. I take his hand and move it down along my side, lightly tracing the scar that the same sword that saved me tonight left there.

" It was that night the pillar fell," he says, moving a single finger over the scar and making me shudder, a not entirely unpleasant sensation, even now.

" Well, it was only fair," I say with a shrug. " I did leave you for dead."

" To hell with it," he says, taking my hand and bringing it to a rough place on the left side of his chest. " This is from shrapnel. I got it when Elena threw a grenade at me in Winter. This morning, she baked biscuits for me. All bets are off."

I laugh despite myself, groaning as my amusement reverberates painfully through my body.

" She really baked those biscuits for Tseng, you know. You just happened to wander in at an opportune time."

" You know what I mean, you stubborn ass," he mutters, folding his hands under his cheek and shutting his eyes. He's right, I do know. He thinks the playing fields are leveled, that we've all forgiven each other, that this is a new era where grudges have evaporated and people generally want to start over.

Maybe he's right. But as I stare up into the darkness, I know I'm at least not as certain as he is that the slate has been wiped clean. I think of Tseng's absurd devotion to Shinra, of my ridiculous, ill-fated search for Rufus. Maybe Avalanche is willing to let go because they won. The rest of us are still holding onto our scraps here and there, hoping for a recount.

I tip my head toward him as he sleeps, feeling grateful, delivered, safe – and wary. Because of my mother. My mother, still haunting me like the ghost I wanted to attribute that note to, the little slip of fool's hope that nearly got me killed. I shut my eyes, afraid that if I keep them open I'll see her lurking in the corner, sitting stiffly in that chair just as she always will be, burned into my memory like a fresh wound, searing at me now more than the bruises from the beating I took.

_Just when you think you've finally worked things out. _

I'm too afraid to think, ever again, that my life has been squared away and set up safe, even with Cloud and his furious determination at my side. He's the one who is still willing to hold onto hope, even after everything he's been through. He's the one who wants to believe that he has arrived at last, that this is the life he's earned and that he can keep it this time.

I want him to be right. But the circumstances of the past few days are twisting in my side like pins against my sore ribs, and my mind keeps returning to that warehouse, to the seconds before Artie walked out of the shadows and spoiled my delusion.

I can't remember if I really wanted to find Rufus or not. I can't decide if it matters, either.

I have everything I need. I have everything I want.

And the ghosts in the corners, my ghosts, laugh uproariously in delight.

Because they know.

That's when _it_ happens.

* * *

A/N: This was supposed to be a _short _chapter, and it ended up climbing to over thirty pages! The characters just won't shut up, I tell ya. Thanks for all the great feedback after the last chapter. At this point, I'm curious to know how Reno's feelings about all this business with Rufus are coming off. It is confusing? His feelings for Rufus are supposed to be somewhat ambiguous, but let me know if the whole thing works or if I need to make it clearer. I'm _thinking_ about starting off the next chapter with a long flashback or something, but I'm not sure, it's not my favorite technique. Is it needed? 


	8. Chapter 8

I served my time

I watched you climb

The wrong incline

But what do I know.

--BellX1

* * *

8.

I saw Rufus Shinra in person for the first time when I was fifteen years old. He was twelve at the time, riding through the Sector Five slums in a limousine. We all gathered alongside the dirty streets to watch the presidential promenade. It was a funeral procession, but without the usual pomp, small and quiet because it was an embarrassment. Just four cars: an escort with sirens buzzing us out of the way in curt warnings, the hearse, the short limo, and a batch of security guards following in a black towncar.

We could see inside the limo only because Rufus had put the window down. He was staring out at the unfamiliar streets with dull curiosity, his gray eyes scanning the people who had come to watch him pass. Through the window I could see his twin sister across from him in the car, her window closed, her eyes red and puffy. But Rufus only stared blankly out, looking vaguely annoyed, as if he'd been woken in the middle of a nap.

" What the hell are they doing here?" one of the boys I stood with asked as they drove slowly through, following the hearse as it clumsily navigated the uneven road.

" You didn't know?" a boy named Fin answered with a laugh. He was second in command to Artie at the time, and the three of us had been on our way to the drugstore to claim our weekly supply of cigarettes from the nervous shopkeeper. We had to stop because the streets were barricaded to let the president's entourage through.

" I knew his wife died," the other boy said. " But what are they doing down here?"

" Bitch was from the slums, man," Fin explained with an ecstatic grin. " President Shinra married her to piss off his old man way back when. Now that she's bought it they gotta bring her back here to bury her, cause it was in her will or some shit."

We all laughed. Historically, it was only when Shinras died that their dirty laundry finally got aired, and we had learned from our parents to lap it up while we could. As the cars rolled by they seemed to glow with humiliation. When the limo carrying Rufus reached us he met my eyes for a moment, just as he was meeting the eyes of everyone who stared at him, a challenging sort of habit that he would never grow out of. He was determined not to be embarrassed, I suppose. He laid an arm over the open window and rested his chin over his wrist, watching us with lazy interest.

I had grown up hating the Shinras, but when I caught his gaze for a moment I was shocked to see that he was just a normal boy. He looked fragile and full of himself, but human, too.

He had gray eyes. Slate blue gray, like the dirty shine on the bottom of the plate when the sun hit it in the morning, just before it climbed over the rim.

We watched the cars go, and when the security escort was far enough ahead, we all made rude gestures and shouted after them.

" Bury your whore and get the hell out!" Fin called with glee, kicking up dirt. I found myself hoping that the kid in the window hadn't heard, not because I felt sorry for him, but because he looked like the kind of person who would take it out on us later, and I knew he'd have the chance.

* * *

Elena comes to me with her brilliant idea about a week after the incident with Artie's gang. It's been a long week full of offering half-true explanations to people who try not to wince when they look at my face. The swelling has gone down now, but I've still got a purple smear of a bruise on my nose, and another one under my eye, going yellowish now.

" Just be glad you didn't lose any teeth," Cloud keeps telling me every time I grimace at myself in a mirror.

He's been giving me brandy in teasing spoonfuls all week long, for the pain. I wanted to tip back the whole bottle on the second day, when my ribs felt like they were trying to tear their way out through my bruised sides, but he convinced me to ration it and I can't say it was an entirely misguided idea. I've been fairly buzzed all week because of it, though only slightly so, and it's made time pass quickly even while the individual minutes seem to float by as if I'm underwater.

Our fingers have been black for days, from reading the newspapers that Tseng surreptitiously collects. None of us have figured out where he's getting them from, or where he spends his days. Tifa hasn't yet tried to round him up for any menial labor, perhaps in exchange for the tokens he brings her from his mysterious travels around the city. He's mostly been offering her various curative materia, which she exchanges for supplies with the hospital in Kalm, using the volunteer doctors as couriers. I'm not sure if she's questioned the source of his supplies, but she's accepted them without objection, at any rate. He's brought various things back for our apartment as well: a couple of jars of peanut butter, and some jam for Elena's biscuits. Two guns, only one of which is functional (according to Rude, who is something of a savant when it comes to firearms, and had only to glance at them to tell us so), electrical tape, some cracked coffee mugs and a pair of women's shoes that didn't fit Elena (though she tried to pretend they did for a few days). As far as I can tell, there is no rhyme or reason to his collection of junk, and I'm starting to suspect that his sojourns have more to do with a hunt for something that he wouldn't likely bring back to the apartment and set on the kitchen table without ceremony. I let him have his game; it'll end badly, but if he wants to search for Rufus I can't stop him, and I've had my last words with him on the subject, I've decided.

The matter that Elena brings to me when she knocks on my door this morning has to do with Tseng, of course, and in specific an incident that occurred last night. Since Tseng has been bringing back food that isn't tuna, all of us have been regularly raiding the supply in the middle of the night, not hoarding or stuffing ourselves, but having little tastes, because we can't stand knowing real food is out there without a secret bite here and there. I've personally been going for the peanut butter, sticking a finger in and enjoying the taste far too much to stop there, but confining myself to only two or three globs of the stuff, all the same.

I was stepping out to do this last night, and hadn't bothered to dress, fresh from Cloud's ministrations and having promised to bring him back a cracker dipped in some of the raspberry jelly.

" Raspberry," he'd whispered again when I got the door open. " Don't forget."

" It'll take two seconds, do you really have that little faith in me?" I'd shot back before slipping out. I tiptoed out in all my naked glory, hoping I wouldn't step on a creaky floorboard, and then realizing it wouldn't matter when Elena shot up from the open fridge, the place where we've been storing the food despite the fact that it's more of a cupboard than a refrigerator since the power was cut. She looked up at me with wide eyes, a cookie in her mouth.

" Cookies!" I shouted, too shocked to remember that I was nude, if that would have stopped me.

" Reno!" she said in a panicked whisper, her mouth full.

" I knew you were hiding something behind those tuna cans!" I accused, pointing at her.

" You're naked!" she hissed. I looked down at myself.

" Well that makes two times," I said dully.

" What?" She held the box of cookies up over her eyes protectively.

" That you've seen me naked," I said, walking over to the cabinet and pulling out the jar of peanut butter. " I'm taking this," I told her, holding it up to my cheek. " _And_ the crackers. So we're even for you holding out on us about the cookies."

" They were a gift specifically for me!" she said stubbornly, still hiding behind the box.

" Yeah, yeah," I mumbled, walking back to the room. " Tell it to the judge." I shut the door behind me and looked to Cloud, who didn't even have to glance down at the snacks in my hands.

" You forgot the goddamn jelly, didn't you?" he asked, deadpan.

I didn't think anything more of the incident, but apparently it's been troubling Elena, as she's called me out to have a talk at the kitchen table, and is having a hard time meeting my eyes.

" I have a little matter to discuss with you," she says, chewing her lip.

" Well, I've been licking the peanut butter out of the jar," I bluff quickly, trying to cover all my bases. " So if you want it back you're going to have to live with that knowledge."

" You can keep the peanut butter," she says, holding up her hands. " I wanted to talk to you about the apartment."

" The apartment?"

" Cloud's apartment," she clarifies, lifting her eyes to mine before glancing away again.

" What about it?"

" It just seems awfully wasteful, you know," she says nervously, examining her nails. " He basically lives here with us, and that apartment's sitting up there, empty."

" Ah, I see. You're trying to kick us out."

" No, no!" she says quickly, looking at me now. " I was just wondering if – Cloud might let Tseng and I have that apartment."

The idea probably shouldn't perturb me, but for some reason it does. With Elena and Tseng here we've been like a pleasant little dysfunctional family, and I've felt a bit like I did when I was living on the sixty-ninth floor of Shinra Tower with the other Turks, especially with Rude barging in every so often. Cloud has hovered among us, a quiet addition, and I've been able to integrate him pretty well since I sustained my injuries. It seems as long as one of us is nursing the other back to health we'll always have an excuse for being together. Even if it is completely transparent at this point, it's comforting.

" Well, I'll have to ask him," I tell her, though I don't see any reason why he'd say no. He doesn't exactly have fond memories of that apartment.

" Alright," she says, straightening. " I appreciate it."

" Getting pretty serious between you two, huh?" I tease, and only after the words are out of my mouth do I realize how I've set myself up. She raises an eyebrow.

" Do you really want to go down that road—"

" Right, right," I grumble, and she laughs as I get up from the table and stalk off toward my room.

" We're not the only ones who need the privacy, I imagine!" she calls as I shut the door on her. Cloud looks up at me from his place at the window. He found a battered old armchair in a junk pile two days ago, and made me help him drag it up the stairs to my room, where he's pulled it over to the window, perennially open now because I complained about the thing's stink. He insists that it's airing out fine and that I'm just being argumentative, but the sight of it makes me scowl every time I enter the room. He's stretched out in it with his feet up on my bedside table, part of a newspaper in his lap, though he's mostly just staring out the window.

" Elena wants to move out," I tell him irritably, standing by the door.

" Oh," he says, pursing his lips. " She could have my old place," he suggests with a shrug.

" She's way ahead of you," I tell him, walking over and falling heavily into his lap. He groans, yanks the newspaper out from under me and tosses it on the floor.

" You're heavier than you look," he complains as I settle onto him, putting my feet up next to his. He wraps his arms around my middle and rests his chin on top of my head.

" How are you feeling?" he asks, lifting up part of my shirt to inspect the cuts and bruises along my side, placing his hand over one of them regretfully.

" Alright, I guess," I mutter. " I'll be damned if I'm gonna want to go back to work when all of this heals, though."

" You're already worried about that?" he asks, moving his hand to my stomach and tucking the tips of his fingers into the hem of my pants.

" Hell yes. And I don't see you jumping at the chance to get back out there."

" I should go," he says, unmoving, looking out the window. " I wasn't really that much help before, though. I think I mostly just wandered in a daze until—" He cuts himself off abruptly.

Until _me_, I think with wicked enjoyment, though actually he might be referring to his attempted suicide. But typically he's more willing to talk about that than admit out loud that I'm worth a damn, so I feel fairly confident in my assumption, and I grin smugly to myself. He might have saved me from Artie and the others, but I saved him first, and I'm not thinking of the suicide attempt, either.

" We should get out of here," I mutter, staring out at Midgar. The air from outside blows warm against our faces, but not hot. Things are cooling down, and fall is coming. I'm relieved and terrified: fall means winter is not far behind, and I don't want to think about surviving the cold without mako power. I can remember a few winters from my childhood when my father couldn't pay the bills and the three of us had to huddle miserably around the stove for days. I felt like I almost lived inside my mother, she'd held me so close to her tiny frame, and it wasn't comforting so much as confining. But maybe with Cloud around it wouldn't be too bad, though I'd still prefer to weather it somewhere else.

" Maybe we could go on a trip," he says, surprising me. " Just for a little while."

" Wutai," I say, brightening. " The hot springs, Turtle's Paradise – we could just sleep all day."

" We do that anyway."

" Not true," I say with a grin, pushing his hand further into my pants. He snorts.

" I don't know," he says quietly, and I can hear it there, that itch to do something meaningful, that obnoxious drive that I could never relate to.

It always seems to happen this way for me: they trick me into thinking all they want to do is lie about and fuck around, then when I'm hooked, when I've signed up for something without realizing it, they change their goddamn plans, and suddenly I'm along for the world domination ride.

Maybe Cloud doesn't want that exactly, but I can feel his resistance when he tenses up at the thought of doing nothing but lounging around for the rest of his life. While any sane person would recognize it as paradise, I can feel him wanting something more, even after everything he's already done.

I've felt it before.

* * *

After the day of the funeral in the slums, I didn't see Rufus again until I'd been hired by Shinra, though I heard plenty about him in the intervening years. He was sent off to a boarding school on another continent at thirteen, but the gossip rags kept close tabs on him, and many of the girls who flitted about my social circle were already fascinated by him.

" Shinras always marry beneath them," they'd say hopefully. " So they can keep all the real power in the family."

I used to scoff, watching them salivate over being subjugated to some rich asshole. Funny, I guess, that I later jumped at the chance myself. I must have been a little jealous, though I didn't have much use for girls myself. Or at least, I didn't have the same use for them that most of my friends did. At the time I assumed I'd spoiled myself by working for a living before getting picked up by the Raptors, but I wasn't particularly sorry about it. For a few weeks I fooled around with a fellow gang member named Wash, but he eventually disappeared, probably nervous that my big mouth would end up getting us both in trouble.

It bothered me, still, that the girls who settled for Artie and the others on a daily basis dreamed about Rufus Shinra. It bothered me that we all resented the Shinras by default, until one of them came along and offered us something.

Didn't stop me from joining the Turks when I was recruited, though. I never looked back.

Training lasted for a month, and Rude was my mentor. I felt like he was my guide through wonderland: when he showed me to my tiny apartment in Shinra Tower I pretended to be nonplussed until he left, then stood at the floor to ceiling window that looked out over the city and jumped up and down until my calves burned, laughing. I felt like I had beaten my shitty life into submission at last, that I had conquered the world. For me, it was enough.

There was a knock on my door soon after I'd settled down on the carpeted floor, running my hands over it obsessively while keeping my eyes on the window. I scrambled up to get it, and Tseng, my new boss, was standing there, looking displeased.

" Excuse me," he said slowly. " But are you - jumping - up here?"

" Um. What?"

" My office is downstairs," he said stiffly. " Please refrain."

It was the first real conversation we'd had since we had been briefly introduced at my orientation. I was terrified of him, but that didn't last long. Rude taught me how to get his goat without getting sacked, and pretty soon I was even better at it than he was.  
Part of our training and upkeep as Turks was to log a minimum of five hours of physical exercise each work week. Rude filled me in on ways to fulfill the requirement while doing as little as possible, and assured me that tennis was my best bet. I didn't even know how to hold a racket, but Rude had grown up playing tennis in Costa del Sol, and he was a patient teacher. We would spend an hour after work playing badly on the courts on the roof of the Tower, beside the helipad and a bank of noisy radiators.

" There goes another one," Rude would say cheerfully as my serves sailed over the nets and began their trajectory toward the plate below.

" Whoops." I would only shrug and grin. We were usually in great moods during this time of day, with a full view of the sinking sun as we stood on top of the world, waiting for our hour to run out so that we could sink down toward the plate ourselves, for our nightly tour of the high class bars in the neighborhood.

One evening, toward the end of our joke of a tennis match, I looked over and saw a kid leaning against the netted fencing, staring at us. I recognized him as Rufus Shinra at once, not because I remembered his face from the tabloids, but because of his unmistakable posture, the same as it had been when I saw him slouched in that limousine window four years before: as if he was only reluctantly willing to humor the world he looked at from behind his half-closed gray eyes.

Appropriately, I suppose, Rude's serve smacked me hard in the cheek when I stopped to stare back at Rufus for a moment. I winced and glared at Rude, embarrassed. He looked over to see what I'd been distracted by and grinned.

" Hey, Rufus!" he called, as if they were old friends. Rufus glanced over at him without lifting his head from where it rested on his arms, which were folded over a metal bar that ran across the fencing.

" What are you doing up here?" Rude asked, walking to the net.

" Just looking," Rufus mumbled, bringing his eyes back to mine before standing and turning to go. Rude and I stood in place and watched him as he made his way toward the door that led to the stairwell and disappeared inside without further comment.

" What's his problem?" I asked, twirling my racket against my palm.

" I think he got thrown out of school," Rude told me. " He's a weird kid."

I wanted to ask if he knew anymore about him, but I stopped myself for fear of sounding like one of the gossip hounds I grew up around, chasing after rumors about Rufus Shinra, someone they would never meet.

But I had met him, and I was proud for it. I couldn't stop thinking about it, in fact, even as Rude and I were making our rounds at the bars that night. Hunched over a carafe full of cold sake – good, expensive sake that didn't need to be heated up to hide the taste – I couldn't stop myself picturing him leaning there, looking at me as if I was something worth seeing.

I told myself that I was only shell shocked from being so close to one of the infamous Shinras, that it was just another fact of my new life that I could throw around to impress my old man if I ever went back to visit him. But the details of his face were stuck in my head more than anything else, and I wondered if he had just been some anonymous kid passing on the street, if I would still be calling to mind his ridiculously pale cheeks as I threw back my drinks, and the way one of his dull gray eyes had crinkled a little at the corner when he'd looked back at me.

He was sixteen years old and the very definition of trouble. That job was everything to me, and in a way I already knew I was doomed, though at the time I assumed it was my career that was in jeopardy, and not something more like my sanity, or my mortal soul.

Two days passed, and I found myself looking for him in the halls as I went about my daily routine with Rude. I could never find him, but I did pass his sister once on the way to the elevators. She didn't meet my eyes, but I saw the resemblance between them clearly, though her hair was darker and her eyes were sharp and bright where his were shadowy.

He was the one who found me, of course, when he wanted to. I was sitting alone in the whirlpool in the employee gym, the only piece of equipment there that I ever found any use for, closed off from the rest in a quiet little room with one high window. Hot water was still relatively novel for me; our house in the slums had only a weak shower with water that came out lukewarm at best. After discovering the perennially steaming and swirling tub I began to spend far too much time just sitting in it, the little drops of water that jumped along the surface like fizz in a glass of soda popping against my face.

I had worked out an ideal time to come and sit in the jacuzzi, when most of the others were at dinner, when I could be alone and revel in my strange new luck with a mad little smile on my face. I was surprised the day Rufus came in, at first just at the sound of the door opening behind me, and then in abject terror when I realized who had caught me lounging there. I spun around after meeting his eyes and sat bolt upright in the water, wishing I could make a break for it but not wanting to be too obvious.

He was wearing faded blue trunks that were too small to be stylish, and had a white towel slung over his bare shoulders. His physique had the look of someone who had once been forced to stay in shape but had happily given it up when he got the chance. He was neither thick or thin, his chest not muscled or hollow, only somewhere in between, and pale as hell all over. As he climbed into the tub across from me I noticed that he was a little on the short side, though most people seemed that way to me.

We sat in silence for a few minutes; I tried not to look at him, despite the fact that he was more or less staring at me. When I finally met his gaze I swallowed heavily, my lips parted – I had no idea what you were supposed to say to someone like him. He was four years younger than me, but his eyes had an old sort of weariness and wisdom that made me nervous.

" I've heard some things about redheads," he mused, looking me over.

" Oh yeah?" I folded my hands over my freckled chest. Most people assumed the color my hair was a point of conversation that I'd happily take up, but it had always irritated me, the way everyone felt they needed to point it out.

He only nodded to himself, screwing up his lips a little and seeming to consider if he should continue. His cheeks were pink from the heat of the water.

" Seems like you'd have your own hot tub," I said after a long silence, uncomfortable.

" Trying to kick me out?" he asked. " I didn't realize this one was yours."

" It ain't. Isn't," I corrected, too late.

He smiled and I sank down further, putting my shoulders under the water even though I was burning up, my forehead sweating badly.

I waited for him to make a joke about the schooling I hadn't had, but he only lifted his arms out of the water and rested his elbows back on the edge of the tub.

" How old are you?" he asked.

" N—Twenty one."

" Liar."

" What?" I wondered if he'd somehow found out, as if he was an omniscient lesser god, that I'd lied on my official application papers when I had joined the Turks. The minimum age for the program was twenty one, and I was only nineteen.

" So this thing I heard about redheads," he said, smirking now. " Don't you want to hear it?"

" I've heard them all," I muttered.

" Then you can probably guess what I'm going to ask."

I could, and I decided then and there that if I was going to prove to him that I was up for his game, I had to do it now. I took a few seconds to consider if I wanted to play it at all, but then realized I was fooling myself to think I really had a choice. I climbed out of the tub and stood with my toes hanging over the edge, yanked down the elastic hem of my cheap trunks, and proved the stories about redheads true, not for the first time. Maybe I didn't need to pull them down so low, but I was semi-hard from the hot water and from the fact that he was sitting in it with me, and I didn't want to miss the chance to show off.

He kept his smirking eyes on mine for a moment before dropping them to my crotch and nodding sagely in the face of my monochromatic hair.

" So it's true," he said simply.

" Yep." I let go of the waistband and it snapped back up. My cheeks matched the color of the hair on my head, too, spoiling my cool façade. But I had a feeling he would have seen through it, anyway. He had the look of someone who had seen damn near everything.

I walked out then, feeling his eyes on my back as I went, and smiled to myself, despite my embarrassment.

For the rest of the evening I was in a fuzzy stupor, trying to decide if all of this was really happening to me. I forgot to eat dinner, and for this reason coupled with the fact that I couldn't stop replaying my filthy conversation with Rufus Shinra over and over again in my head, I was up late that night, staring at the ceiling of my apartment, weak and hungry and thrilled with myself.

I was surprised when the my apartment's front door opened and Rufus walked nonchalantly into the room, because, as much as I'd heard about him over the years, I didn't know him yet.

" What are you doing?" I asked, sitting up in bed, my heart hammering in my chest as he crossed the room toward me. He was wearing a battered burgundy robe and nothing else, so far as I could, not even shoes.

" My door was locked," I said, at a loss when he came to stand at the side of my bed, his back to the giant window, the curtains still thrown open because I never closed them. " How did you get in?"

He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a thin keycard, turning it around a few times.

" I have access to every room in the building," he explained calmly. " Except my father's office, of course," he added with a dark smile I didn't understand yet.

" _Why_?"

" Because I do," he said without irony. It was his answer for a lot of the things he had. He wasn't very philosophical about his privilege; I suppose he didn't see any reason to be.

" Well – what do you want?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to be right about what I suspected he had come for.

" You left without letting me return the favor," he said, undoing the tie on his robe. He pulled it open and waited for me to work up the nerve to look down. In the light through the window, from the city as much as the moon, I saw what he wanted to show me: he was blond all over, his cock resting regally on a smooth patch of hairs that matched those on his head.

I hadn't the foggiest idea how to respond to that, so I sat there like an idiot and stared as he started to rise a bit, a sort of invitation to do what it seemed like he was asking for, what I wanted to do anyway, but I was frozen in place.

" Here," he said, grabbing my hand and placing it against him. " You're not getting the full effect." I swallowed a whine of gratitude as I ran a trembling hand over him, hair fine and silky, almost silver in the moonlight, though I was distracted by the commoner heat of his dick. I ran a careful thumb over him, tracing a fat vein down the pale length of it.

I looked up at him as if for another cue, though I knew by then where this was leading. He stared down at me with sleepy-eyed patience, the glow from the city outside lighting his pale hair like a halo.

For Rufus I pulled out all the stops, used every trick I learned or invented during my brief and exhausting stint as an underpaid specialist in sucking cock, and he didn't last long, owing either to my expertise or the fact that he was a sixteen year old boy. When he finished I swallowed without hesitation, and he fell forward with a panting sigh, his hands resting on my shoulders for just a moment. I wanted him to fall into bed with me, but he straightened, and closed his robe.

" Right," he said, exhaling. " Thanks."

He was always awkward after he came; it was the one time when I could count on his prep school cynicism to falter. I didn't know this yet, so I was left to wonder if I'd done something wrong, broken protocol somehow, as he walked to the door with a surprised sort of stagger.

" What's your name, by the way?" he asked as he pulled the door open, regaining his composure somewhat.

" Reno."

I didn't bother to pretend that I needed to ask his. Everyone in the world knew who he was.

Not wanting to spoil my sheets, which were relatively basic but still nicer than any I'd slept on before, I stood in the bathtub and finished myself off, rinsing it out when I was done.

Back in bed, I knew that I would never get to sleep, so I didn't even try. I only stared at the ceiling and tried to puzzle out what was going to happen next.

I thought, so this is how people feel when something so incredibly strange happens to them: as if they always knew it would.

* * *

Cloud gets up ridiculously early every morning, just like Rufus used to. The difference is that Rufus would slide silently out of bed and disappear, or at least go out into the halls of his apartment and have contentious phone conversations. Cloud, on the other hand, prods and pets me until I wake up, too, scowling at him and grumbling as he writhes around, fully awake at the goddamn crack of dawn.

" How are you feeling?" he asks, sitting up on an elbow and examining the bruises on my face.

" Fine," I mumble, keeping my eyes shut and hoping he'll take a hint.

" Did you have any dreams?" He asks me this every morning, I'm not sure why. It almost seems like he's waiting for me to have some kind of predetermined vision and report back to him about it.

" No." I did have dreams, maybe, but I can't remember them.

" Oh." He puts his head down against my shoulder, and I press my cheek to his forehead, staring at the ceiling. He might want me to ask him if he had any dreams, but I'm too irritated with him to comply.

" I think I'm going to go down and join the crew today," he says, looking up at me. I keep my eyes on the ceiling.

" What for?"

" To help," he says stubbornly, sitting up again. I glance over and see him staring at me with a seriousness that I can't interpret.

" Great. What are you waiting for, my permission?"

He frowns and slides away from me, climbing out of bed. I feel bad, but this is what he gets when he wakes me up this early in the morning. If he'd waited about twenty more minutes we could have had a drowsy fuck and gone back to sleep, but I guess he hasn't been satisfied with the usual result of his prodding me awake. Apparently goddamn Midgar's welfare is more important.

" You really think they can make what's left of Midgar into something worthwhile?" I call when he's at the bathroom sink, splashing water on his face.

" It's worth a try," he says, leaning toward the mirror to smooth his hair down.

" Says who?" I grumble, though I know the answer to that question. Tifa, Reeve, Barrett: his friends. His people.

He doesn't answer, only dresses quickly and starts to go for the door.

" Hey, hey," I call before he can get there. " C'mere." He gives me a reluctant frown, but walks over and kneels down by the side of the bed, where I roll to face him, grimacing when I feel the pressure on my ribs.

" Who'll give me my afternoon blow job?" I whine, pulling him to me for a kiss. He rolls his eyes and tries not to smile.

" Who'll give you yours, for that matter?" I ask with a grin. It's something I'm rediscovering, that I missed giving them as much as getting them. Well, maybe not _quite_ as much, but I've been enjoying it, at any rate. The bruises on my cheek and the soreness in my jaw give the practice just the right hint of pain.

" I'll be back for lunch," he tells me, kissing my nose.

When he's gone I have trouble getting back to sleep, and I curse him for it and gaze lazily around the room. I finally get up about an hour later, have a freezing shower and dress in clothes that need washing. I could do laundry, I realize, looking around at the shirts and pants that litter the floor, some of them mine, some of them his. I make a face at them, kick a shoe across the room, and decide I'm not well enough to do any work yet. Maybe when my ribs are fully healed in three weeks or so, the laundry will get done. Or I'll have Cloud do it tomorrow.

I walk out of the room, stretching my hands over my head, and find the apartment empty, Elena and Tseng already about their morning business. I fish through the fridge looking for those cookies of hers, but she's smartly hidden them somewhere else. Tired of biscuits, I wander back into my room and dig the peanut butter out of a drawer in my bedside table, sit in Cloud's chair and stare out the window, scooping globs of it out with my fingers. I feel unbelievably content, and I'm trying not to let it make me too nervous.

After dozing in the chair for awhile, I wake to the sound of knocking on the apartment's door. I grumble in my sleep and wait for Elena or Tseng to answer it, then remember they're not here and stand, blinking around the room and slamming the peanut butter jar down onto the bedside table.

When I yank the front door open Reeve is standing there, leaning on his crutches and looking uneasy.

" What the hell do you want?" I ask, yawning and scratching my head. He gives me a look of extreme consternation.

" You know, it just figures that you'd get yourself beat up like this and miss weeks of work," he says, shaking his head. " You probably did it on purpose."

" Bitch at me all you want," I groan. " Tifa said I didn't have to work until my ribs heal."

" Only because Cloud lobbied for you."

" Did you come up here just to tell me how worthless I am?" I ask, embarrassed now.

" No," he says, peering over my shoulder. " I'm looking for Tseng. I was hoping he could help me with a little – errand."

" Well, there's no goddamn telling where he is," I answer honestly, shrugging.

" I'm here," he says suddenly, and I peer around the doorframe to see him coming down the hall, a black duffel bag in his hands. I know what that bag means: goodies that he didn't have to give to Tifa to barter for his freedom.

" What have you got?" I ask, excited, pushing Reeve aside.

" You were looking for me?" he says to Reeve, ignoring me.

" Yes," Reeve says, glancing at me and clearing his throat. " I have something of a favor to ask."

He pauses, and Tseng looks between the two of us.

" Whatever it is, I'm sure you can ask in front of Reno," he says, and I puff up my chest, grinning.

" I can't drive, you see, because of my leg," Reeve mutters. " And I was hoping maybe you could drive me out of the city for a bit, since you're not working."

" Well, I certainly owe you a favor or two," Tseng says, meaning to sound conciliatory, I think, as he walks into the apartment and lays the duffel on the table.

" Come on in," he says, and Reeve staggers inside, giving me an unappreciative look as he does.

" Where the hell do you want to go?" I ask, leaning in the doorway.

" Just out to the surrounding fields," he says after some hesitation. " There are some – things – I want to pick up."

" Things?" Tseng frowns, unzips the bag and pokes around inside, not taking anything out. I hurry over and try to get a glimpse of what's in there, but he zips it back up and gives me an aggravated look.

" Flowers," Reeve suddenly gushes, sighing. " I wanted to get some flowers for Tifa. There. Have at me," he adds, glaring at me. I throw up my shoulders as if I'm appalled at the suggestion.

" Hey, be my guest!" I say cheerfully. " If that helps you get into her pants, I'm all for it!"

" Reno," Tseng says crossly, shutting me up. He looks to Reeve.

" I'd be happy to," he says. " Maybe I'll bring some back for Elena."

Reeve smiles, and I try to read the look in Tseng's eyes. He seems all too pleased with himself to just be doing this out of the goodness of his heart. I know he must be at least a little thrilled that he's again in a position to do favors for those in power.

" Come on," he says, " We'll take a car from the garage at the hanger. You do have – permission to use them, don't you?" he asks Reeve, hesitating meaningfully.

" Of course," Reeve says obliviously, heading for the door.

" Excellent," Tseng says. I know he must feel me staring at him knowingly, but he doesn't look back. When they reach the door I go for the bag, and he turns back and raises an eyebrow.

" Reno," he says, and I freeze, my fingers on the zipper. " Why don't you join us?"

I grumble a few half-assed protests before following them out of the apartment. I'm actually pretty bored, and the chance to get out of Midgar is just as worth taking as it was before the place wasn't a smoldering husk of its former self. Casting a longing look back at the bag containing the day's scavenged swag, I shut the door behind me and slip out into the hall.

The morning is warm and bright, and the three of us hitch a ride on a van that shuttles volunteers from the dormitories to the hanger, which has become something of a transportation hub for the new Midgar. I smile darkly to myself, thinking of it that way: Neo Midgar. Rufus had thrown that one around a lot in the days before the end, plans for some kind of Eden within the Promised Land. It's more than a little heartbreaking, really, to think about how crazy he got before he died. I'd been in denial at the time, of course, assuming there were simply things about the world that people like Rufus and Hojo understood, things I'd never quite grasp. Now that it's come to light that Hojo was a raving lunatic I can't help but place Rufus on a rung just beneath him in my memories.

When we reach the hangar Reeve checks out a car for us, and hands the keys to Tseng. There's a kind of significant moment, I think, or maybe I'm just projecting. But it does mean something: Reeve trusts him. He's still fluctuating between the old Shinra crew and his Avalanche buddies, and that can only work to our advantage.

What, exactly, it might help us to do, I have no idea. Escape? Issue in some kind of reign of Turk terror? I'm not even sure what I want from this brand new world, or what Tseng could possibly want anymore. I think of Cloud and sink into my seat in the back of the car, Tseng driving and Reeve sitting up front beside him. Maybe I'm fluctuating, too.

We drive until we're far enough from the wreckage of Midgar to find fields of virgin grass, and I watch the sea of green pass by while the two of them search for flowers. I think of the flowers growing in the church that no one mentioned when Reeve told us he was looking for some. No one would ever pick those. Even the roving thugs have taken to preaching the gospel of the Savior, from what I understand. She was one of them, after all. Not a thug but a survivor, a kid from the slums. Maybe they think that if she could save the world, any of them could. Either way, her flowers are off limits to mere mortals like us.

I think of Cloud, what it must have been like to love someone like that, and to lose her. Well. Maybe that's not so hard for me to imagine. Maybe I had the inverse in Rufus, Midgar's dark angel.

But no, that was Sephiroth. And Cloud had him, too.

We finally find a field full of wild flowers about ten miles from the city, and Tseng pulls over and parks alongside the dirt road. He helps Reeve climb out of the car and hands him his crutches, and I walk ahead of the two of them, into the rolling hills covered by various colors, most of them only pretty weeds, a few patches of poppies here and there.

I lie down in the grass and shut my eyes against the sun while the two of them collect their tokens. Being here makes me think about my first trip out of Midgar. It was on a Turk mission; we went to Gold Saucer to put the squeeze on one of the President's political enemies. I remember leaving the walls of Midgar and driving in a buggy toward Junon, where we would take a boat across the ocean. More than the blank expanse of the sea I'd been startled by the seemingly endless stretches of nothing along the roads on the way there: miles and miles of land covered by a blanket of grass, punctuated only by the occasional tree or bush. It was beautiful but infuriating, that people were living like dogs packed into crates on the lower levels of Midgar when all of this was just outside, waiting, impossible for a poor person to make any practical use of, but so deceptively tempting and free.

I feel something nudging my shoulder, and hold my hand over my eyes, looking up to see Tseng jostling me with his shoe.

" We're ready to go," he says, and I stand up and squint at him in the blinding sunlight.

" Not bringing any flowers back for a special someone?" he teases under his breath.

" Fuck you," I grumble, not looking at him. What he doesn't know is that I did yank some of the yellow ones up and shove them into my pants pocket. They're not for Cloud, though.

We ride back mostly in silence, Reeve holding the bouquets for Tifa and Elena in his hands.

" Did Elena ask you about Cloud's apartment?" Tseng calls back at one point.

" Yeah," I mumble, wiping at grass stains on my pants. " It's all yours."

" Tell him thank you for us," he says.

" Mmm." I lean forward. " You and Tifa moving in together yet?" I ask Reeve, punching his shoulder.

" No," he says, glaring back at me. " What – what exactly happened between she and Cloud?" he adds after a moment, his expression softening. " Do you know?"

" She was pretty much obsessed with him," I tell him boastfully. " But he has way better taste than you."

" Oh, right," he snarls. " Mind telling me what the deal is with the two of you, then?"

I realize too late what I've just gotten myself into, distracted by the opportunity to insult Reeve. I can feel Tseng watching me in the rear view mirror, waiting for a response himself.

" Nothing – none of your fucking business, anyway," I mutter, sitting back and folding my arms over my chest.

" You know I remember you and Rufus Shinra," Reeve says, pissed off and sneering back at me now. " The two of you were pretty infamous back in the old days."

" Yeah, so?" I'm staring into my lap now, my cheeks burning.

" None of us ever understood what he saw in you, either," he tells me.

" Reeve," Tseng says sharply, and he scoffs and turns around, facing forward. I can't look at either of them: what does he mean, _none of us_? Did the Shinra management team actually sit around and discuss Rufus and I over the boardroom table?

We get back to the city in the early afternoon, and Tseng returns the car and helps Reeve into one of the shuttle vans. I follow them in reluctantly, feeling humiliated and tired. I had plans to make a pit stop in the city before going back to the apartment, and it suddenly occurs to me that I don't want to go alone. When we arrive at the dormitories Reeve climbs out and hobbles toward the front door with his stupid flowers, and Tseng starts to follow him.

" Hey," I call quietly, and he turns back.

" Something wrong?" Tseng asks, clutching his own flowers, mostly poppies, with some wispy purple ones thrown in among them.

" No, I just . . .," I look at the ground, kick at the dirt for a moment. " I want to show you something. Go put those upstairs and meet me back down here, alright?"

" Alright," he says uncertainly, turning back for the dorms. I sit on the curb near the front drive, staring into space and chewing on my lip.

When he comes back down he's carrying a beer and a packet of almonds. I perk up at the sight of both objects, and grin at him when he twists the cap off of the bottle.

" I thought we could split this," he says. " I found it earlier." I take it from him and drink happily, slap him on his shoulder. He smiles and opens the bag of nuts, dumps a pile of them into my open palm.

" Come on," I say, heading toward the street. " It's this way."

Tseng doesn't ask where I'm taking him, only walks beside me, trading sips of the beer with me as we go. As we move through the dirty streets I realize why I've missed him so much, despite the fact that he can piss me off like no one else when he wants to. Of all of the friends I have left, he's the only one who knows when to just shut the hell up.

We arrive at our destination long after we've finished off our drink: it lies between Sectors Three and Four, the nicest graveyard in the slums. Rufus's mother is supposed to be buried here, though he told me years ago that she'd faked her death. I can't remember where her grave is, but I can still find my father's pretty easily: it's toward the front, one of the simpler ones in the row, fifth from the left, eight rows back. I stop there and nod to it, Tseng standing beside me.

" My dad," I tell him, without emotion.

" I'm sorry," he says, staring down.

" Don't be."

We keep moving, toward the back, the shadowy part of the burial ground, which bumps up against one of the heaps of junk that always seemed to spontaneously pile up around the city, even before they had real reason to. This one is full of rusted cars that form a maze of walls back behind the gravestones, twisted metal and torn rubber acting as a sort of urban forest between the cemetery and a barbeque joint that I can smell from where Tseng and I stand, in the very back corner, near a rusted blue and white car that I remember finding very suave in a smashed up sort of way, the first time I staked out this place.

" This is what I wanted to show you," I tell him when we come to it, an improvised grave made of part of a car bumper, alone and out of line with the rows. I brush the dust and dirt off of the once-shiny marker, so that he can see where I carved the initials 'R.S.' into the fiberglass material.

" I made this for him," I explain, pulling the crumpled yellow flowers out of my pocket. " He can't have a real one, you know, people would tip it over or something." I spread the flowers out at the base of the thing, trying to arrange them so that they're not so bent and pathetic looking.

" Reno—"

" Thanks for – you know. Defending me, or whatever, in the car."

" You were being an ass," he says after a pause. " He had a right to get upset."

" Yeah, I know."

We stay there for a moment, and Tseng kneels down beside me to stare at the grave, as if it will impart some information to him if he watches it closely enough.

" Does it seem more real to you, now?" I ask him desperately. He looks at me with more sympathy than he's ever offered before.

" Yes, I think it does," he says in a clipped sort of way, standing and pulling me up with him. " We should go," he tells me. " It took awhile to walk here. It's – getting late."

" I'm sorry if you feel like, you know," I mutter, stuffing my hands into my pockets. " You didn't get to say goodbye or whatever. I didn't get to, either."

" It's alright," he says, squeezing my arm. " Really – let's go."

He hurries ahead, and I look back once before leaving, give the stupid little piece of bumper and the stylish old car a wave, as if it's him there, as if he'd been waiting for me to come see him. I feel like an idiot, and jog ahead to Tseng, who seems determined to leave as quickly as possible. I wonder if I finally got through to him. I wonder why doing so suddenly feels so important.

* * *

It's a fairly well known fact that most of a Shinra's major life decisions will be made for the express purpose of irritating his father. Midgar was built, in fact, largely because a Shinra wanted to cheese off his old man in the most spectacular way possible. The original plan for the land the city was built on, which the family had always owned, as far as everyone knew, was simply for a giant collection of mako reactors, which would be used to power the surrounding cities via underground power lines. But Ander Shinra went behind his father's back and secretly built a city between these mako reactors, instead instituting the plan to install individual reactors in towns throughout the world. This brilliant plan essentially started every bloody battle in the world for the past fifty years, but Ander, Rufus's grandfather, died happy anyway, having successfully pissed off his father, which was the point of the whole endeavor from the beginning, of course.

This is what Rufus told me, anyway. We'd been fed a different history of the city in grade school, a self-congratulatory one written by Shinra that praised the family for bringing convenient energy to the masses. But I learned a lot of truths about the company during my first year as their employee, thanks in no small part to the fact that the president's son seemed to have chosen me as his personal concubine. I figured it was, more or less, just his own attempt to irritate his father. The fact that he requested me as his bodyguard every time he left the Tower also pissed off Tseng, my more immediate superior, and I knew that fooling around with Rufus was a dangerous gamble, that if he got bored with me I would be royally fucked. But I couldn't have refused, even if I wanted to.

Most of our time was spent sneaking in corridors at night, having clandestine fucks on balconies or in broom closets, after which I would have a smoke and he would sit back and chuckle to himself, thoroughly amused with his new plaything and our game. I knew he got off on the possibility of getting caught, and though the stakes were much higher for me, I did, too.

" What the fuck's so funny?" I'd always ask him, and he'd just shake his head at me and smile, fastening up his pants.

During the day he had me escort him around the city. Not the upscale bars and shops above the plate, but the dirty streets of the slums, which he seemed to find fascinating. He would dress down in his usual attire: an old t-shirt and a pair of gray pants that were torn and frayed at the bottom, but people still recognized him, and stared.

It was during one of these little trips that he first took me to the graveyard between Sectors Three and Four. This was before my old man had died, and I'd never seen it before. He led me to the middle of the unimpressive collection of headstones, kicking aside styrofoam cups and cigarette butts as he went.

" What the hell are we doing here?" I asked, nervous. He leaned down and rapped the largest stone in the place on its smooth top, as if he was patting a kid on the head to get his attention. I read the inscription: _Lucrecia Shinra, beloved wife and mother_.

" My mother," he said, putting his hands on his hips.

" I'm sorry," I mumbled, uncomfortable.

" Don't be," he said with a shrug, his face betraying nothing. I stared at him, then back at the gravestone. This was either before he found out she faked her death, or before he wanted to tell me so.

" You didn't get along?" I asked. I wanted to leave, but he seemed rooted to the spot, standing over her.

" She was going to keep him from sending me away," he explained, running his tongue over his teeth. " Then she killed herself instead, and off I went."

" What's so bad about going away for school?" I muttered. " At least you got out of Midgar."

" I love Midgar," he muttered absently. I thought of what he said the first time he'd let me fuck him. Nervous about how young he was, I'd asked him if he'd done this before.

" You've never been to boarding school, have you?" he'd asked with a sneering smile.

After the graveyard we wandered the streets, me following a few steps behind his random path, watching the people around us for any signs of a potential attack. But this was back in the days when Shinra was still respected, and people loved Rufus's sweet and sour blond face best of all. They smiled as he passed, seemed to think themselves blessed for having been in his presence. Rufus hardly noticed, only scanned the windows of the shops we passed, as if they could offer him anything he didn't already have.

" Where's your house?" he asked me as we walked through Wall Market.

" I'm not – from Midgar," I muttered, a nervous sweat creeping up around my collar.

" Such a bad liar," Rufus mumbled, stopping to peer at a jeweler's makeshift display, laid out on a card table by the side of the road. The man behind the table dropped to his knees as if in the presence of a king, but Rufus didn't look up or address him in any way.

" Fine, I'm lying," I admitted, guessing by now that he must have read all of the information that the Turks had on file about me, though how he'd known my real age was still a mystery. " But we're not going to my fucking house."

" I can go wherever I like," Rufus muttered boredly, fingering the cheap beads on a fake pearl necklace.

I didn't know how to answer that: it was true, and I didn't feel capable of challenging him, though the thought of showing him the hovel I grew up in and introducing him to my father was enough to make me want to retire altogether.

" I'll take this," Rufus told the man behind the table, throwing down some gil and sliding the necklace into his pocket. The vendor babbled in gratitude and Rufus walked away without acknowledging him. I waved to him as I followed behind, but he was still staring after the president's son in awe.

" What about your parents?" Rufus asked when I caught up. " What do they do?"

" Nothing," I answered honestly. As far as I knew this was true: I had never heard from my mother again, and my father hadn't worked for as long as I remembered. I'd given him money since I started working as a teenager, and I still sent him a small portion of my paycheck from Shinra every month. I wasn't sure why I did it; he didn't deserve it, and I hated him.

" They're dead?" Rufus asked me without sympathy.

" No. Or. I don't know."

" You don't know?" He was walking back toward the graveyard, twirling the cheap necklace around his finger.

" I don't know about my mother," I mumbled, figuring I shouldn't bother lying to him since he would only see through it. " My father's still around."

" Your mother left you?" he asked, stopping at the entrance to the graveyard.

" Yeah."

He stared at me for a moment, then walked ahead. I lingered behind, watched him go back to his mother's headstone and place the necklace carefully on top of it. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at it for a moment before turning and coming back to me.

" You still like her better, though, right?" he asked me childishly. I frowned and considered the question, realized that I did.

" I take it you don't get along with your father, either?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow. His father was a subject we had so far avoided, though admittedly we weren't doing much talking in those days.

He smiled slowly, his eyes going narrow the way they did when he told me without speaking that it was time for me to get down on my knees.

" That's a long story," he said quietly.

I didn't learn much more about President Shinra that first year, from my job or the illicit teenage boyfriend who also happened to be his son. Rufus didn't reveal much about himself, either, and didn't even deign to kiss me until we'd been screwing around in the shadows for almost six months. Rude and I were out drinking when it finally happened: he was sitting in one of the bars we hopped to that night, surrounded by a posse of beautiful young people, all drinking and laughing as if the entire world was their marvelous inside joke. Rufus, of course, was in the middle of the group, looking aggravated and half-asleep, drinking out of a bottle of wine. I tried not to stare at him from my place at the bar, but I couldn't stop myself, and he lazily met my eyes a few times.

" Lucky son of a bitch," Rude said with a grin when he saw who I was staring at. There were a couple of girls leaning at Rufus's side, one trying drunkenly to get her tongue into his ear. I squirmed in my seat and tried not to be jealous. He was just a good fuck, I told myself. He would marry a girl like that in a few years; he'd have to. Maybe we could still fool around, if he wasn't too busy ruling the world by then.

I got pretty wasted that night, and when Rude wanted to move on to the next bar I refused to go. He shrugged and ordered another round, and I slid clumsily off of my stool and headed back for the bathrooms.

" Gotta take a piss," I announced loudly, glancing over at Rufus's group. But he was gone, the overstuffed armchair he'd been lounging in now occupied by a beefy guy with his hand down a laughing girl's shirt.

When I stumbled back to the hall that led to the bathrooms I wiped at my eyes and tried to get my bearings. Before I could I saw Rufus back there, leaning against a pay telephone and dozing with his arms draped over it. I went to him and grabbed his arms, giving him a good shake. His head tipped back and then forward, and he blinked for a moment, trying to get his eyes to focus on me. When they did he burst into an easy grin I'd never seen before.

" Reno!" he sang, slumping against me.

" What are you doing, idiot?" I snapped. " You can't just stand around in bars – unguarded. You're drunk as shit."

" I don't normally drink," he slurred, grabbing onto the lapels of my jacket and giggling stupidly.

" You don't say."

" It's supposed to be my birthday," he told me, trying to make his face serious.

" Congratulations. You look like you're enjoying it."

" Those people," he said, shaking his head. " Fuckin' ass kissers. Inbred fakers." He stepped closer to me, until the tip of his nose was pressed against mine. I felt something like an explosion of confetti in my chest, and I could feel my heart pounding in the back of my throat, waiting.

" What the hell's wrong with me?" he asked, smiling to himself before leaning in to kiss me. I sighed happily into his mouth and yanked him closer to me, forgetting everything, not caring who saw. It would always be like that, from then on. We were reckless and didn't care who knew, Rufus because it didn't really matter for him, me because I forgot that other people, eyesight, embarrassment, my job, everything existed when he kissed me.

" Listen," he said pulling back urgently, his bottom lip wet and shining. " I think you're a real person," he whispered into my face.

" You're probably right," I told him, grinning a little.

With that, he promptly threw up all over my shirt.

Rude and I took him back to Shinra Tower after that, one of us holding each of his arms while he stumbled gleefully along, as if he'd already forgotten about barfing.

" What smells?" he'd ask us cheerfully every couple of steps, and Rude would laugh, looking over at my ruined clothes.

" Shut up and walk," I mumbled, dragging him along and hoping he wouldn't try to kiss me again until we were alone, or at least until he'd brushed his teeth.

When we reached his penthouse toward the top of the Tower I fished around in his pants pocket for his keycard, and opened his door with it. He had more or less passed out by then, and Rude had pretty much carried him as we rode the elevator up. As I kicked open the door I reached out and Rude dumped him in my arms.

" I'll take care of him," I said, still pretty drunk myself and being a little careless. Rude only smiled.

" He'd probably like that," he joked. It had become a regular thing by then, Rufus's requests for me to accompany him around the city, and even Rude had guessed at the reason. I muttered goodnight and pulled Rufus inside the apartment, shutting the door behind us. Distracted by him, I didn't prepare myself for what I saw when I turned around, reaching over to flip the lights on.

The place was cavernous, with high ceilings and windows that reached all the way up from the thick, white carpet. I hastily stepped out of my shoes, and felt my feet sink into it as I pulled him past furniture carved from polished dark oak, tasteful trinkets of every kind sitting upon it. A kitchen I passed, which looked like it had never been used, was outfitted with white marble, and the television in the living room I dragged him through was bigger than any of the four walls in my apartment. When I came to the bedroom I found an enormous bed covered with red and white sheets, overflowing with a mountain of pillows.

" Nice place," I muttered, dropping him on the bed. He groaned and clutched at his stomach.

" Reno. I don't feel so good," he whined, wincing and rolling onto his side.

" You'll be alright," I told him, pulling off my jacket and shirt, and then, for good measure, my pants. " You got a washing machine in here?" I asked him.

" I have my things sent out," he answered in a moan. He threw an arm over the side of the bed and reached around blindly, looking for me. I picked up my filthy clothes and looked around for an appropriate place to stash them, but everything was too damn nice to touch them. I tried the bathtub, but it was made of emerald green marble and immaculately clean. Finally I settled on placing them in a pile on top of the toilet lid, which was a high quality porcelain but still, well, a toilet.

When I walked back into the bedroom Rufus was fast asleep. I thought about climbing in beside him in my boxer shorts; I was pretty goddamn tired myself. I bent down to inspect him, to make sure he was breathing normally. I found myself slightly mesmerized for a moment, leaning on the edge of the giant bed and watching him sleep. He surprised me when he opened his eyes, and I jumped.

" What are you doing?" he mumbled against the sheets, reaching out to grab my arm. He pulled me onto the bed, where I settled on my stomach, my head turned to face him. He left one cool hand on my shoulder and closed his eyes again.

" I can't get caught here," I told him, imagining President Shinra coming in to rouse him for breakfast and finding a naked Turk splayed out in bed with his son.

" Don't leave me," he murmured, half-asleep.

I was always in for it when he asked me to do something. I could never refuse. So I stayed there, and got up three times in the middle of the night: once to get water for myself, once to get some for him, the third time to throw his legs over my shoulders and fuck him while he gurgled out sleepy encouragement. It was just before dawn, the sky glowing pale blue outside, and I felt like the goddamn king of the world, screwing the heir to the city in that giant bed. The sun seemed to break the horizon just as I came inside of him, and I fell forward and kissed him, kissed him so I could forget everything again.

As we laid there after finishing, falling asleep again, I wondered if I would feel like this if he was just a kid I met on the streets. I tried to picture myself wandering through Sector Six and seeing him in the crowd like a gift from God, blond and sweet and clean and willing. Maybe it would have been better that way, I thought, running a hand through his hair. We could have lived in a little hut in the slums, maybe opened a bar together, spent our days just screwing around in bed. I was worried, even then, that things were bound to change for the worse, and I wasn't wrong.

When I woke up that morning I realized in a rush that I was late for work. Rufus was gone, and when I jogged into the bathroom to get my clothes I saw that they were gone, too. Then I heard footsteps out in the apartment and realized what had woken me, my heart icing over when I heard a voice that wasn't Rufus's:

" Fussy?" a girl called, and I scrambled behind the bathroom door. I found his ratty burgundy robe hanging there and pulled it on.

Through the crack between the wall and the door I saw a blonde girl wander into the bedroom, and recognized her as his twin sister, Scarlet. She tsked at his unmade bed and rubbed her chin, looking around. She walked toward the bathroom and I shut my eyes, afraid this would be the end of my fun.

" Fus?" she said, only peeking in quickly and then turning back. I heard a door open and close out in the apartment.

" What the hell are you doing in here?" Rufus demanded when he entered. He was dressed and had some plastic-wrapped drycleaning thrown over his shoulder: my clothes.

" Just wanted to see how your party went," she said.

" Snooping around to see if I brought anyone back here?" he corrected, pulling the plastic off of the clothes and laying them neatly across the bed.

" That doesn't really look like your style," she remarked, staring at them.

" I guess you've caught me, then," he said, disinterested.

" I didn't even see you yesterday," she muttered. " Our birthday."

" You could have come out with us."

" I don't like that kind of stuff," she said. " You know that."

" Hmm. You mean you don't like embarrassing him."

" Fussy—"

" Don't call me that," he snapped. " Why are you here? Shouldn't you be off in Junon, being brilliant and getting decorated?"

" You'll be there soon enough yourself," she returned defensively.

" He can't make me do anything," he snarled.

" Oh please."

" Why don't you get the hell out of here?" he hissed. " If you're sniffing after a birthday present, I'm sorry. I didn't get you anything."

" Why are you so mad at me?" she mumbled.

" Don't you mean _us_?" he answered, glaring at her. She turned and walked quickly out. I waited until I heard the front door open and shut before creeping out of the bathroom. Rufus didn't look up at me when I walked into the bedroom; he was staring at the floor, glaring at it as if trying to burn a hole in the expensive carpet.

" So that was your sister," I said, feeling awkward. He looked up at me as if just noticing I was there.

" Oh, yeah," he mumbled. " She's a pain in my ass. Here. I got your things cleaned." He gestured to the bed.

" Thanks," I said, pulling off the robe. " I gotta go to work. I'm late – Tseng's gonna skin me."

" Don't worry about him," Rufus muttered, sitting on the bed and watching me dress. " I wanted to have breakfast with you," he added, surprising me.

" So come and get me from the office after I clock in," I suggested with a shrug. He ran his hands over the sheets, distracted. I wondered if he was thinking about what Scarlet had said about Junon, that he would be headed there soon. I hoped she was wrong, but the defeated posture of his shoulders made me think she probably wasn't.

" Hey," I said, walking to him. I bent down and took his head in my hands, tipped it back and kissed him. He put his hands on my ass as he returned the kiss, and I laughed against his lips. " Happy birthday," I mumbled, staring down into his eyes.

" Yeah," he muttered. " Right."

It would be a week before I found out why he was so gloomy about his birthday. I didn't get to see him much during the day, busy with overseeing shipments of Hojo's research specimens, which apparently required a full guard. When I did find him wandering the building at night he seemed to kiss me with a new ferocity, less passive and more frenzied.

" You okay?" I asked him one night when we were squeezed into the corner of our favorite balcony, on the 56th floor, one that had a view of the lights from Kalm glowing far away in the distance. We were both breathing hard, spent and tired, leaning against each other.

" What do you think of running away together?" he asked me after a long pause for consideration. He looked at me frankly and without emotion, as if he was proposing a business deal. I raised my eyebrows, laughed and assumed he was kidding.

" Sure, where to?"

" I'm not joking," he told me, frowning. " I could get my hands on some money. We could . . .," he trailed off, seemed to get distracted by a helicopter that flew over our heads, taking off from the top of the building. I pulled him closer to me, ducking back into the darkness. He buried his face against my chest for a moment, and I wasn't sure if he was hiding or looking for comfort there. I kissed the top of his head. His hair smelled so good, and I thought of that marble bathtub of his, of sinking into it with him, using some of that surely ridiculously expensive shampoo on myself. I tried to picture us on the road together, too, sleeping in tents, running from his father, running out of money. I wasn't sure which life I'd prefer, but I knew I'd follow him anywhere.

" I'm serious," I told him. " I'll come with you. You just name the place, kid."

" Don't call me kid," he mumbled, pulling himself from me and standing, refastening his pants and straightening his shirt.

" I'll be in touch," he said plainly, and turned to go, slipping back inside the building. I watched him until he disappeared into the darkness of the empty hall, then looked back out to Midgar, and Kalm beyond. I fished around in my pocket for my cigarettes and had a long smoke before going back up to my room.

The next day I woke to find a note slipped under the door. It was on official Shinra stationary, but I recognized Rufus's self-conscious teenage scrawl.

_Meet me at Charlie's in Sector Two at noon_.

And under that, in parentheses:

(_That's an order_.)

I smiled at the note, enjoying the joke about him ordering me around. He did, basically, call all the shots, but as long as it meant he wanted me around, I didn't mind. For the rest of the day I sat watching the clock in the office, and finally turned down Rude's offer to get lunch together in the cafeteria, rushing over to Tseng's desk.

" I've got to meet Rufus in Sector Two," I told him. " I'm not sure when I'll be back."

He gave me a supremely irritated look.

" Rufus really ought to log any use of the Turks' services with me," he said, glancing down at his papers. I chewed the inside of my cheeks, trying not to laugh about all the uses of my services that Rufus hadn't officially logged.

" I'll – mention that to him, sir," I said, clearing my throat to choke down my laughter. He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes.

" Is there something you need to tell me?" he asked, making my face go pale.

" What? No—"  
" I suppose it won't matter soon enough, anyway," Tseng muttered, looking back down to his work. I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but turned on my heel before I could, not wanting to be late to meet Rufus.

" Have fun!" Rude called, giving me a teasing smile as I walked past him. My face was red as I hurried out of the office, realizing that people were starting to catch on. I jogged through the hall toward the elevator, hoping Tseng's comment didn't mean what I thought it did.

I reached Charlie's a few minutes late, and I was sweating in the mid-afternoon heat as I rushed toward the little restaurant in the slums, with its outdoor patio comprised of tiny ramshackle tables and variously sturdy chairs. I saw Rufus sitting alone at one of the tables by the wooden fence that corralled the place, conspicuous amongst the usual crowd, many of whom were glancing at him and whispering as I weaved my way toward him. He was smoking a cigarette and watching me approach with detached bemusement.

" Sorry I'm late," I said breathlessly as I fell into my seat. He turned up the palm of one hand and shrugged.

" Think nothing of it," he said, taking a drag.

" I thought you hated cigarettes," I muttered, a sick feeling building in my stomach.

" I did."

Staring across the table at him, I waited for more, but he only smiled cryptically and tapped his cigarette against the overturned lid of a jar, which was good enough to be an ashtray at Charlie's.

" Why'd you want to meet me here?" I asked, looking around at the people who were packed into the popular lunchtime restaurant.

" I have something to tell you," he said. " This seemed like the right place." I looked down at the grimy menu I was gripping: a handwritten sheet laminated between curling pieces of sticky plastic. My mother used to take me for Charlie's for my birthday as a kid. I scanned the menu to see if they still served the ice cream sundaes I used to love.

" What do you have to tell me?"

" Goodbye, I guess," he said, and I jerked my eyes back up to him. I wanted to protest or remind him of our plan to run away together, but I swallowed all of that and made a curious face.

" How – what do you mean?"

" They're shipping me off to Junon," he told me, examining his fingernails. " They do it to all the heirs, after they turn seventeen. We have to spend a year getting military training."

I sat in silence, gripping the menu. The waiter, a short man with stick-out ears and a red face, appeared at my side.

" What're ya having?" he barked.

" Nothing, I'm not hungry," I mumbled, staring down at the menu.

" No, go ahead," Rufus said, waving his cigarette at me. " Get whatever you want. It's on me."

" I'm not hungry."

" Well, I'll have another of these," Rufus said, lifting a glass with melting ice cubes. The waiter made a note on his pad and disappeared.

" So you're going to Junon for a year and then coming back to Midgar?" I asked when he was gone.

" That's the plan," he said, blowing smoke. " Of course, my sister's been there since she was fifteen. Apparently she's an engineering savant." He shrugs. " Don't know what they need me for, really."

" You don't want to go?" I asked hopefully. He looked me in the eyes, wet his lips and put the cigarette out.

" Doesn't matter, really."

The waiter came back and set down a glass full of amber liquid. When Rufus drank from it I could smell it: whiskey.

" Why are you drinking in the middle of the day?" I asked, though I knew the answer. He tipped the glass toward me.

" I've got to have my fun while I can," he said. " I'm about to become a slave to the Shinra machine. That's why they send the first born son off for this training, you know. To get him ready to take over."

" Your father is stepping down?"

He laughed, a little too hard, and finished the drink.

" No, no. God no. They do it case he dies. The Shinra's have a lot of enemies." He nods to himself. " We're something of an endangered species."

" So you're insurance," I muttered, staring at him, wondering what had changed his mind, exactly. Last night he was ready to run. Or maybe that was all talk, maybe he was always planning on giving in.

" Listen," he said, sitting forward. " I thought maybe you and I could get a room at the Honeybee, have a farewell fuck."

" No, I have to get back to work," I said hurriedly, annoyed with his flippant attitude, though I knew what it was in place to hide. He was still a coward. I would have gone. I would have wandered the world with him, penniless.

But part of me was almost relieved when I got up to go. Rufus was exhausting, and I loved the Turks, wanted to be part of the team again. I looked down at him, telling myself this and still unable to walk away.

" Hey, I'll show you something," I said. He raised an eyebrow, curious.

" What?"

" Just come with me."

He threw some money on the table and we hopped over the fence. I started walking toward Sector Five, and he trailed behind me, keeping close as people watched him pass.

When we arrived at my father's house I didn't bother to knock. I paid for him to stay there, after all – it was really mine. It was a tiny shack pressed between two nearly identical homes, with homemade bars on the windows and a door that he foolishly left unlocked. I opened it and turned back to Rufus, who was watching me with alarm now.

" This is—"

" You wanted to see it, right?" I asked him gruffly, going inside. He followed after a few seconds.

The front room was dark, the dinner table balanced on the dirt floor with stacked sugar packets, its surface littered with empty beer bottles. I opened the fridge to make sure the mako bill had been paid, and it was running, not quite cold but cool enough to chill the remaining three beers he had in there. I took them all out, handed one to Rufus. He took it, staring at me with concern, suddenly sober and silent. I heard the TV coming from the bedroom and walked toward it with the other two beers.

" Dad?" I called, pushing the door open with my elbow. He was inside, sitting in the dark on the bed with his hands in his lap. He was wearing a blue sweater I didn't recognize, and a pair of old cargo pants that were torn in both knees. He looked old, so much older than he should have.

" Hey, son," he said, smiling at me when I handed him a beer. It was the first time I'd been to the house in almost two years, but he looked back to the TV as if my standing there was nothing out of the ordinary. We both popped our beers open and I sat down beside him on the bed. I looked to Rufus, who was standing stunned in the doorway, his beer unopened.

" Here's someone you oughta meet," I said, poking my Dad in the shoulder so he'd turn to see Rufus. " This is Rufus Shinra, Dad. I work for him now."

" You work for my father," Rufus corrected quickly, surprising me. " Now."

" Heeey," my old man said slowly, drinking from his beer and waving at Rufus. " I'll be goddamned. Is that really him?"

" It really is."

Rufus and I stared at each other for a moment. He was standing very stiffly, looking around the tiny bedroom that had once been mine. My mother bought me the TV when she got her hands on that money, before my father found out about it.

" Look at this program," my father said, gesturing to the tiny TV with his beer bottle. " It's a travel show. My favorite."

The screen showed a beautiful young girl interviewing the owner of an inn in Mideel. The volume was down low. He just liked the pictures, the images from far away. It had never occurred to me that my father liked to travel. I thought of his infamous trips to Gold Saucer, the way he used to spend all of our money. My mother and I were never invited along.

" I've got to get back to work," I told him after a few minutes, slapping him on his back. He coughed a few times, then threw back the rest of his beer. I stood and finished mine, handed him the empty bottle.

" You seem to be collecting these," I said. He laughed, leaned around me to look at Rufus.

" My kid, he's got a sense of humor, huh?"

Rufus opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded, his eyes unfocused.

" Later, old man," I said, heading for the door.

" Alright," he called, turning back to his show. " You take care, Reno."

When we got outside Rufus was still clutching his unopened bottle of beer. He looked at me, tried to muster up a frown but only ended up looking scared.

" C'mon," I said, walking ahead of him. " I'll take you back to the Tower."

We didn't say anything on the way there. I felt satisfied, and doomed. He was still leaving. I was afraid he'd come back to me changed, and I was right. We would pick up when he returned, but not where we left off. His year in training at Junon would make him a Shinra at last: devoted, diabolical and deranged. He would still be Rufus, but he was never again that boy I snuck through the hallways with that first year, when we were both just a couple of teenagers who had ended up in Shinra Tower by luck or fate, looking for an entertaining companion.

I told myself that was all he was when we reached the front doors of the Tower: entertainment, temporary, that he was always going to be gone. We stood there uncomfortably, watching employees shuffle back inside after their lunch breaks.

" Well, good luck," I finally said, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking him a little. " I suppose I'll see you again someday."

I wouldn't. Not him, not that kid who stood at the foot of his father's empire and looked shaken by what he had seen inside my childhood home, not the boy who wore torn up t-shirts while he roamed the slums at my side, looking for cheap noodle stands and buying fake pearls for his dead mother. That was the last day I saw _him_.

But Rufus Shinra did come back to me, eighteen years old, wearing only white suits and walking with perfect posture. We would never talk about that first year, about the kiss in the bar or my father sitting in the dark watching television, or what happened next.

" If I decide to run away I'll come and get you first," he said in a rush, and leaned forward to kiss me hard on the lips, grabbing the sides of my face and dropping the beer as he did. It exploded at our feet, the sound of the shattering glass causing all of the returning employees to turn and see their boss's kid kissing the new Turk with stark desperation, the smell of cheap beer wafting over the front steps as he did.

Rufus pulled back and looked at me with vulnerability in his gray eyes for the last time, then let his hands fall away and ran inside. I stood with the broken beer bottle and the stunned crowd of onlookers and watched him go, knowing that he wouldn't run away, and forgiving him for it.

I always forgave him everything.

* * *

When I get back to the apartment with Tseng, Elena is cooking dinner. Her face lights when she sees us, then it falls a little when she notices our expressions.

" Are you two alright?" she asks. I see the flowers Tseng brought her sitting in the middle of the table, in a vase. Near the door there are a few boxes and bags, everything she's planning on moving up to Cloud's old apartment.

" We're fine," Tseng says, walking to her and peering over her shoulder at the pot she's stirring.

" I thought I'd make one last dinner before we moved out," she explains, kissing his cheek. " Thank you for the flowers," she says quietly.

" Oh – certainly," he says, going into his room. When he comes back out he's carrying a bottle of gin, and he pours a little of it into a glass and throws it back. I stand stupidly in the middle of the kitchen, in a bit of a daze.

" Reno, are you hungry?" Elena asks, looking at me with suspicious concern. I glance up at her, blink a few times.

" What? Yeah." I look around. " Where's Cloud?"

" In your room, I think," she says. I leave the two of them and go to look for him, find him sitting on my bed and messing with his bandages. I shut the door behind me and the room is mostly dark, the sun going down outside.

" Hey," he says as I come to sit beside him. " Where were you? I came by for lunch . . .," he trails off, looks back down to his arm, where the gauze is fraying around the fastenings.

" Sorry," I say, yanking him to me. I squeeze him tight and pinch my eyes shut against the top of his head. He laughs, pats my arm.

" Are you okay?" he asks.

" Yeah," I tell him, letting him go and sucking in a deep breath, letting it out. " Yeah, I am." I smile at him, and he gives a confused look, grins.

" What have you been up to?"

" Nothing," I answer quickly. " Nothing. You?"

" I, uh, made an appointment to get my stitches out," he says. " Tomorrow, at the hospital in Kalm. Do you still want to—"

" Yeah, I'll come with you," I tell him, kissing his temple. " I need to get the hell out of the city, anyway."

" About that," he says, picking at his bandages again. " I thought maybe after my stitches come out you and I could go to Wutai. You know, like we talked about?"

" Really?" I say, breaking into a grin. " Hell yeah, that sounds great." I can't think of anything I need more than to be away from Midgar for a little while.

" Want to go eat dinner?" he asks.

" In a minute," I say, sighing and falling onto him, pushing him back onto the pillows. He grins and kisses me, and I let out my breath, sinking into him. Somehow I feel like I haven't seen him in a long time.

* * *

The next morning dawns earlier than I'd like it to, as I'm woken by the sound of knocking on our door. I groan and push away from Cloud, who stirs but doesn't wake as I pull on a pair of pants and go to answer it. When I do Tseng is standing there, fully dressed and looking somber.

" What's wrong?" I mumble, rubbing at my eyes.

" Nothing is wrong," he says. " Elena and I are going to begin moving out this morning."

" Great," I say, yawning. " If you're looking for help you can come back in a few hours. I may be feeling more generous then."

" No, we don't have that many things," he tells me. " I was wondering if you would come for a walk with me."

" What—"

" I wanted to show you some of the places where I've been finding goods," he says, putting a stopper in my rant. " So that you and Cloud won't have to survive off of only tuna when I'm gone."

" Alright," I moan. " Just let me get dressed."

I shut the door on him and turn to pick up a shirt and pull it on over my head. I think about waking Cloud, then decide to let him sleep, since he has his appointment in Kalm later on this morning. In a way I'm a little sad that the stitches are going. They look terrible, but they had a hand in bringing us together, and I'm afraid that when they're gone things will be different. It's stupid, though. I tell myself that soon we'll be sitting in a hot spring bath in Wutai, washcloths on our heads, drinking sake from a bottle on one of those floating wooden rafts.

Tseng and I leave the dormitories and head toward Wall Market, the streets still mostly empty.

" You have to go early," he tells me. " Or people will see the places you're pulling things from and raid them when you've gone."

" Why don't you just get it all at once?" I ask, tired and annoyed, though he is doing me a favor. " Why keep going back every day?"

" I can't carry that much, for one," he says. " Just follow me and watch closely."

But we don't stop anywhere until we've come all the way to the back of Wall Market, to the old bamboo and clapboard mansion that used to belong to Don Corneo. There are some smashed lanterns in front of the place, banners torn down and doors boarded up.

" I can't believe no one else has thought of this," I say, looking up at the place where the owner of three Sectors worth of brothels used to live. I always hated the old bastard, and I can't say I'm sorry he's dead, or that I had a hand in killing him.

" I know," Tseng says simply, leading me around to a side door. We pass by a group of three girls who are huddled in what used to be a supply shed, and they watch us pass with large, hollow eyes, like raccoons looking out from a dead tree.

" Just beggars," Tseng tells me, when I look at him with confusion. He raps on the door five times, waits, raps twice more, and then five times again.

" What the—"

" Reno," he says, turning to me and putting a hand on my shoulder. " I'm sorry I had to do it this way. If it had been up to me—"

Before he can continue the door opens, and Palmer is standing behind it, as fat as ever. His eyes bulge a little when he sees me.

" I thought you were dead," I say without hesitating. I look to Tseng. " This is who you've been getting food and stuff from?"

" Yes," Tseng says. " Go inside." He glances at Palmer.

" I don't think this is a good idea," Palmer mutters gruffly, giving me a look. He never liked the Turks.

" Well, it's a good thing that it isn't up to you, then, isn't it?" Tseng says, pushing me in and shutting the door behind him.

The inside of the mansion is dark, and all I can see is Palmer's bumbling form moving ahead of me through the halls. The place smells like mildew, but I notice as we move into the foyer that there are lights burning.

" Power?" I say, frowning around at the tacky décor. " Where are you getting power from? That's not mako, is it?"

" Tseng tells me you've joined up with those mako hating terrorists," Palmer spits, continuing ahead.

" I did not say that," Tseng insists sharply. " Corneo had a secret supply of mako, in a reactor built entirely underground," he explains as we come to a side room. " It was part of the arrangement he made with President Shinra – he would keep tabs on the gangs and the rebels in the slums if the President gave him his own reliable source of energy."

" So no one knows it's still running?" I ask, feeling dizzy. I look across the room and see none other than Heidegger sitting at a low table and slurping hot noodles.

" Reno," he grunts. " It would figure that someone like you would survive the fall of Shinra," he says with a mouthful, speaking as if Shinra's collapse was the true catastrophe, never mind the Meteor that nearly ended the world and the manmade demigod who came close to swallowing it whole.

" It seems like everybody did," I shoot back, looking around the room. There is a collection of filing cabinets around the perimeter, most of them badly dented. Tseng, Palmer and Heidegger are looking at each other tensely.

" What the hell is this?" I ask, unsettled. The mako powered lights glow softly in the windowless room, and I can hear a dripping noise. I feel like I've been taken to the underworld, to some kind of hell plastered with cheap scrolls featuring bad reproductions of erotic Old Era art.

" Reno," Tseng begins, but before he can a door in the far corner of the room opens.

And Rufus walks in.

He's carrying a file in his hands and looking down at it, wearing his old black shirt and a pair of gray slacks. His hair is longer and his cheeks are a little hollow, but he's Rufus.

He's Rufus, alive and standing there in the half-lit room, and when he looks up at me he doesn't seem at all surprised or disturbed or apologetic.

" Oh, Reno," he says, tucking the file under his arm. " Good, good. What time is it?"

I wait for myself to pass out, to cry, to react. I try to turn my head to look at Tseng, and realize I've lost control of my body. I'm standing stark still, staring at him, my face colorless, my hands shaking.

" Six o'clock," Heidegger answers when no one else speaks, his voice thick with noodles.

" Great." Rufus walks to me and frowns. " What's the matter with you?" he asks, irritated. " You didn't really think I was dead, did you?"

" Rufus, I told you—" Tseng begins.

" You know I'm getting a little tired of you motherfucking zombies saying that," I manage to get out, my voice strange. Rufus laughs.

" What? Oh yes, we did think Tseng was dead for awhile, didn't we? Well, it was a surprise to me when Heidegger saw him wandering the streets and dragged him back here." He shrugs.

I tell myself to turn and walk away as fast as I can. But I can't stop looking at him. I'd forgotten how much I missed his face.

" Do you want that report on the underground reactor?" Palmer asks uncertainly when no one speaks or moves.

" No. Will you all leave us?" Rufus asks, glancing around at them. " We'll have a meeting in the receiving room, say, around noon?"

" That's lunchtime," Heidegger protests, standing. Rufus doesn't answer him, and eventually he trails out after Palmer. Tseng follows them, glancing back at us mournfully, but I can't look at him right now. I wonder if I'll ever be able to pull my eyes from Rufus, to let him out of my sight again.

When I hear the door shut behind me I cross the space between us in one giant step and pull him to me. He drops the file and papers scatter all over the dirty floor. He laughs, waits for a moment, then puts his arms around my shoulders.

" Alright, alright," he mutters against my shoulder. " I've missed you, too."

Again I wait. To cry, to yell, to punch him or even to silently hate him. I wait, knowing it will come. But all I can do is hold him, crush him to me until he coughs a little into my ear.

There are a thousand questions I should ask him. Why he's kept himself hidden from me, how he survived the attack, what the hell he's doing here with Heidegger and Palmer, and how long Tseng has known. But only one comes immediately to mind.

" Are you alright?" I ask in a rush, pulling back to look him over. He's still got both legs, two arms, no visible bruises.

" I was going to ask you the same," he says, smiling. " You look like shit."

Confused for a moment, I touch my face and remember the fading bruises.

" Yeah, I almost died," I mutter without thinking, staring at him again now.

" Well, that makes two of us," he says, shrugging as if it was all nothing. He leans forward to kiss me, and I know I should jerk backward, I should push him off, I should hate him for laughing in the face of my shock.

But instead I only return his kiss, pushing a kind of hopeless sob into his mouth, my tongue meeting his and the confetti flying again between my bruised ribs, and I'm not sorry for anything, though I should be, though I will be.

Because I forget everything when I'm kissing him.

* * *

A/N: Another chapter way longer than I intended! What I ended up hoping to show via the flashbacks was how Reno changed in response to Rufus's change, that he wasn't always so cocky and sure of himself, that he kind of had to become that way in order to deal with the Rufus he fell in love with and lost, and to keep up with the "new" Rufus, who doesn't really appear too much in this installment. I'm trying to decide if I want to continue the alternating flashbacks in the next chapter or not, so let me know what you think. Are we familiar enough with "canon" Rufus not to need them, or would you like to know more about what happened with Reno and Rufus after he returned from Junon? Thanks for reading, and thanks again for all the spectacular reviews last time – you guys are the best! I've seriously never had such thoughtful and thorough reviewers in any other fandom. : ) 


	9. Chapter 9

9.

There was talk of Rufus returning to Midgar before he actually did. As much as I'd tried to deny it to myself, I kept an ear open for news of him during the year he spent in Junon. The tabloids still gave him regular coverage: at first the reports were that he was doing poorly, their covers featuring split pictures of Rufus on the left and Scarlet on the right, insisting that the twins were feuding because she was sabotaging him. Later President Shinra bought out the Midgar presses and the stories switched to rumors of his dating an eligible bachlorette, daughter of a decorated general. Though I knew it was a lie, the images of her on the rows of magazines hung on the street stands still bothered me. She had long, dark hair and was consistently smirking, probably owing to the fact that they paid her well to keep up the game.

I would pretend not to notice the magazines as Rude and I passed them on the way to lunch or a job, but I'd make excuses to stop on corners so I could sneak closer looks. Lighting a cigarette, I would look beneath the sensational red text to the pictures of him that it was printed over. His hair was shorter and neater and his face was inscrutable, unrecognizable. I felt like I'd never really known him, as if I'd dreamed the whole thing.

Determined not to pine, I slept with other men, and women, too. Rude raved about it so often that I thought I'd give it another try. They made me feel less lonely than the men did, because I wanted less from them. Nobody fit right. I dreamed about Rufus's penthouse apartment, those sheets, that marble bathtub. Sometimes I would walk by the locked door and stare at it, as if it might open, as if he might pull me inside.

When he did come back, the staff was prepared for it. There would be a ball in celebration of his return, and we were all expected to attend. Rude and I bitched to Tseng about it, but he wouldn't budge. I was humiliated at the thought of standing in a crowd of nobodies and applauding Rufus as he stood gazing out over the adoring masses from a stage in some ballroom. I decided to get smashed. Maybe I would even make a fool of myself. That would show him.

Elena was my date. At the time she was a teenager who worked at a food cart in the lobby of the Tower, selling coffee and bubble gum. I was a regular there, always needing coffee to stave off hangovers, and she teased me for it.

" I'm going to apply," she kept telling Rude and I, on afternoons when we'd lean on the counter of her makeshift café, avoiding Tseng when he was on the rampage. " As soon as I'm old enough. I'm going to be a Turk."

" We just make it look easy," I would tell her.

" I don't care," she'd say, beaming. " I can do it. You'll see."

We got a kick out of her, and when I asked her to come with me to Rufus's welcome home gala she was thrilled. I even lent her some money to buy a posh dress.

" I'll pay you back," she said when I gave it to her, fanning the bills in front of her face like a kid. She was dead broke, a farm girl from Gongaga sent to the city just a year after their reactor blew up, living with five other girls in a tiny apartment. I gave her a small fortune and told her to buy the best dress she could find. I wanted to show off for Rufus, who hadn't sent me a single letter or called me once while he was away. Elena was supposed to play my new blond teenager, and I wanted her to look like a million bucks on my arm.

On the night of the party I was too queasy with nerves to get properly drunk, and Elena was driving me crazy, refusing every glass of champagne that was offered and hanging on my arm, asking me who everyone was.

" That one, over there," she whispered, tugging my arm and pointing to Heidegger. " In the green suit. Who's he?" When I told her she nodded to herself, wide eyed, and I expected her to start taking notes any minute.

She looked beautiful, and I tried to take comfort in this, though halfway through the evening Rufus was still no where to be found. He was supposed to have shown up an hour earlier to make a speech, officially accepting his new position as Vice President. There was much whispering about the controversial decision to give the position to him instead of Scarlet. Some people insisted that she'd turned down the offer from her father, who was often rumored to favor her, allowing her to become head of the Weapons Development division instead. Others claimed she'd been betrayed by Rufus, who had surprised everyone in Junon by excelling as a leader where his sister had only been a talented engineer.

" Want to go to the Honeybee?" Rude asked me through a yawn an hour before midnight, when Rufus was still a no show and people were starting to trickle out or collapse, exhausted and bored, into chairs around the lavish Shinra Tower ballroom.

" I'm not really in the mood," I told him. His date worked at that reputable establishment, and she was passed out on his shoulder, asleep standing up. He left soon after, to take her home and to make the after party rounds by himself. I stayed with Elena, the two of us sitting on the edge of one of the finely appointed dinner tables. She swayed along with the music from the live band on stage, bumping against my shoulder.

" Why won't you dance with me?" she whined.

" I don't dance."

I looked up to see Tseng walking toward us, looking stoic and perfectly groomed, though the rest of the crowd was wilting, makeup running and ties loosening. Elena sat up straight as he approached.

" What's the deal?" I asked him when he arrived.

" This is a show for his father," Tseng said without thinking, looking to Elena only as an afterthought.

" Is this your sister?" he asked when she smiled at him obliviously.

" What, is it so hard to believe that I have a hot date who isn't related to me?" I asked, putting a defensive arm around her. Elena shrugged it off.

" I'm not his sister," she told him. " But we're just friends."

" I see." He looked back to me. " You can leave if you want to," he said.

I grumbled something intentionally indecipherable and stood up, telling them I was going to go get a drink. As I left I heard Elena saying that she recognized him from the coffee cart, that he always bought the cinnamon gum, and that was her favorite, too.

The room felt stuffy and stale, and I pushed out onto the giant balcony to get some air. It was icy outside, but the balcony was only on the tenth floor, so the wind wasn't so bad. Only one other person was braving the chill, standing at the railing and smoking a cigarette. I pulled out my own pack and walked over to bum a light.

When I came to stand beside him it took me a few moments to realize it was Rufus. At first he only looked vaguely familiar, and I squinted in the darkness, trying to place his face. He looked like Rufus, only his nose was sharper and his eyes were surer, still disinterested but in a different way, somehow. And his clothes: the pressed white suit jacket, a black _turtleneck_? I stood there dumbstruck, wondering if there was a Shinra triplet I didn't know about.

" Why are you looking at me like that?" he muttered around his cigarette, holding it to his lips. He didn't even turn to look me in the eyes, didn't need to. I was recognizable, hadn't changed much since he'd left me. Not physically, anyway.

" Does anyone know you're out here?" I asked, my voice pitching when it fully dawned on me that he was actually standing there.

" You know, I hate cigarettes," he muttered, putting his out against the stone railing, and turning to me at last. " I think I should quit."

" You're a jackass, making everyone wait like that," I sputtered, at a loss.

" It's a subtle message," he muttered. " You wouldn't understand."

" Well, fuck you," I grumbled, turning to go. " Hope you can understand that one."

He laughed and grabbed my arm as I was leaving. I let him pull me back, and he squeezed harder than he needed to, yanked at me with a demanding sort of gesture that wasn't playful or needy.

" What, you're upset with me?" he asked, smirking. I was still taller than him, but even as he looked up into my eyes, he towered over me.

" I don't give two shits," I spat back, my heartbeat roaring in my ears. It was what my father used to say when loan sharks threatened him: a pathetic, last ditch cop out.

" You're a bad liar, Reno," he said, his voice low. He pulled me close, his hot breath in my ear. I glanced back at the ballroom, through the high windows and the glass doors, but no one was looking out. The sound of my name on his lips was strangely flattering, and I felt like giving in, though I knew I shouldn't.

" I do so love it when you talk dirty to me, though," he said, the words warm on my cheek. I stared back at the party longingly, trapped. When I turned to look at him I knew it would mean my undoing, but there was no sense in putting it off any longer. He was more handsome, not as pale, his eyes a little brighter and more calculating.

" Don't look at me like that," he groaned, releasing me. When he let me go my arm felt sore, and I wanted his hand there again, holding me tighter, until my shirt tore and fingers broke skin.

" I never promised you a rose garden," he said, laughing. I waited for him to look at me and smile, to signal that the joke was for me, too, that he was only being charitable in his ironic way. But it was just a laugh.

He went inside then, and was met with applause. I stayed on the balcony in the freezing wind, only heard his acceptance speech in muffled bits through the closed doors and windows. But it didn't matter. He looked the part; people were instantly enamored of him. They had watched him grow up, on TV and in the papers. He had always been blond and adorable, and it was enough.

That night I waited up until dawn for him to come to my room, alternately praying that he would and cursing that damn keycard for allowing him to. When the doorknob finally turned I looked up and found myself hoping that he'd be wearing that old bathrobe. But he was in his white suit, then and always afterward, and he came to sit on the edge of my bed. He stared out at the city for awhile, pale blue at dawn, and I sat up on my elbows and waited for his next move.

" Oh, Midgar," he said, sighing. I felt like he was really talking to me and not the city, resigned and still homesick, though he had returned.

" How was it?" I asked. " Junon?"

" Long," he answered after a pause. He looked at me. " I feel like I'm two hundred years old."

" Yeah, I know," I said, though I didn't. I felt like a kid, stupid and clueless and left in the dark. But it had felt like at least two hundred years since I'd seen him.

He turned and leaned on me then, and I dissolved into the bedsheets and let him have me. He didn't even undress, just unzipped his pants, and when he was done he only laid still on my back for a moment before pulling away. I felt hopeless as he rolled off the bed and tucked himself back into his pants, and especially because I'd liked him that way, maybe even better than before, rough and fast and without explanation.

I expected him to go directly for the door, but he sat down on the bed again, and then laid down, not against me but beside me, still breathing heavily, his hands folded over his stomach.

" Everyone in the world is my enemy now," he said to the ceiling. " Can you possibly understand how that feels?"

" Sure, I've been paranoid before," I said with a scoff.

He smiled and looked at me.

" You're the only person who's honest with me," he said, leaning to kiss my eyebrow and making the spinning room still again. " Even when you lie."

" What the fuck are you talking about?" I asked, propping myself up and reaching over to run a hand through his hair. " Everyone loves you. You saw them in there when you gave your speech."

" Mmm." He shut his eyes and let me stroke him until he was almost asleep, and when his lips parted I bent to kiss him, slipping my tongue into the heat of his mouth. He lazily returned my kiss, only half awake, and then pulled abruptly away, falling sideways off of the bed and stumbling onto his feet.

" You wouldn't understand," he said, his back to me, straightening his suit coat. I laid on my side and watched him go for the door.

" Try me," I mumbled.

" Maybe someday," he said with a strange smile, half-turning back to me before slipping out the door.

* * *

It takes me a few minutes after Rufus pulls away to regain any kind of thought process. When I do I blink around the dim room, a nauseous feeling creeping out from the center of my stomach. I look down and see him collecting the papers he dropped, _tsk_ing with accusation. 

" How can you be alive?" I ask, going for the most obvious question first. He sighs as if he's too incredibly put upon to answer, stacks the messy papers on top of one of the file cabinets.

" My brother," he says simply, after a pause. I can't stop staring at him. Did his hair always fall in his face that way? How can he be so clean and cool when the whole world is hot and covered with the dust of death?

" Sephiroth?" Toward the end there had been ravings about the two of them being related. Rufus never told me the whole story, but apparently they had the same mother. This mysterious mother who killed herself, but didn't, who was a whore, or a scientist, and disappeared when he was seven – but wasn't it twelve?

" How?"

" Oh, what does it matter?" he says with a shrug, his back to me. My knees finally give out and I sit down heavily on the dirty floor.

" Why'd you let me think you were dead?" I ask, my voice bucking with the question, because I think I know the answer and I don't want to hear it out loud.

" I'm a pariah, it's a disaster," he muses. He comes to me and pulls me up onto my feet, leads me over to a cushiony sofa along the far wall. It's red, like every goddamn thing in this rotting whorehouse.

" I can't go anywhere, people would lynch me," he says, sitting beside me and touching my forehead with disinterest. " You're green. Are you going to throw up?"

" No." Though actually I think I might.

" Reno, for God's sake." He wrings his hands in his lap, looks around the room uncomfortably. " Don't get so upset. It had to be a secret for awhile."

" But Tseng knew."

" I told you, Heidegger dragged him back here when he saw him out on the street. He doesn't have to be as careful as I do, you know. He wasn't really a public figure." He laughs to himself.

" It's been terribly dull, just the two of them here with me," he says. He touches the nape of my neck, making me shiver. " I miss your hair. Kind of."

" Don't, don't," I say, standing and throwing my hands out, as if trying to shake off a spider. " I can't do this – there's . . . I've got to go." I think of Cloud, asleep, or maybe awake now, already hating me because I've run away without telling him, again. I wonder suddenly if Tseng told Rufus about Cloud, and that's what does it: I hurtle into the corner and dry heave a few times, cough, try to get something out and then try to batter it back down.

" You're so dramatic," Rufus says from the sofa.

" You were _dead_!" I scream.

" Here comes the big scene," he says with an impatient groan. " You should know from experience that they're all out there listening. Keep it down."

" I have to go," I tell him, stumbling for the door.

" Oh, really?" he says with amused disbelief. " Don't be an idiot, I haven't seen you in months. Get over here."

I walk sheepishly to him without protesting, my eyes glued to his face. It had hurt, really, to try and walk away, and the sight of him again is like being healed. When I sit down on the sofa he crosses one leg over the other and sits back, sighs.

" Tseng talked me into it," he tells me. " Into bringing you here."

" You didn't even want me here," I mutter, looking at my hands. It's not a question.

" No, I did," he insists. " I just. I think I didn't want you to see me this way."

" You look fine."

" That's not what I mean," he says. " I was going to wait until I restored the empire."

" You're a fucking lunatic," I tell him, and he takes one of my hands.

" Yes, I know you think so," he says, stroking my palm. " I think that's what I always liked about you. You give me more credit than most people do, in that way."

" Goddammit, Rufus." I run my hands over my face, then look back to him. I want to kiss him again, and I hate him for it. I think of Cloud, and no, no, I just want to run away and crawl back into bed with him. Maybe I'll wake up there and this will all have been a dream, just another nightmare.

" Please tell me you don't really think you can rebuild Shinra," I beg. He smiles slowly and I have my answer.

" There's another reactor, a much bigger one, under the remains of the Tower," he says, giddy with excitement. " Oh, God, why am I telling you this? Tseng tells me you're playing at being an environmentalist."

" That's a load of bullshit," I spit, though the thought of Rufus hoarding mako over the world again does feel poisonous and terrible, suddenly.

" Well, he was worried about your loyalty at any rate," he says with a shrug. I wait for him to make some comment about Cloud, then decide Tseng isn't that cruel. Not that he wouldn't sell me out to Rufus, but he cares too much about him, wouldn't want to hurt him by telling him that I'd moved on.

" Tseng knew you were alive," I mutter, putting my head in my hands. " How the fuck did he know?"

" He must have heard us using the old radios," Rufus explains with a shrug. " I heard him on the channel a few times. We couldn't answer, of course, or we'd be found out. I wasn't even sure it was him."

" We thought he was dead," I say, glaring at him.

" Yes, well. What was I supposed to do about that?"

" You know they're basically holding us captive!" I howl, standing, trying to work myself into a rant. " Avalanche, Tifa and Reeve – they're making us work, keeping us in Midgar."

Rufus only chuckles, fusses with a stray eyelash.

" Give me a break," he mutters. " As if they could really keep you here against your will. Your problem, Reno, is that you don't have any place to go. You never have. That's why you like being told what to do."

I reach down and yank him up off of the sofa, reel back as if I'm going to hit him. He doesn't even flinch, hangs in my grip comfortably and raises an eyebrow. I drop him and he stumbles backward for a moment before regaining his balance.

" I'm leaving," I growl, heading for the door.

" Heidegger told me about the whole Reconstruction thing," he calls, as if nothing has happened. " I was always going to send for the three of you, when the time was right. But what good are you to me now? I haven't got anyone to shake down yet."

My hand is on the door knob. It's cold, and the reality of it stings my palm.

" If you're so miserable there, why are you going back to them?" he asks, walking to me. He stops a foot or so behind me, waiting to see if he needs to play the physical affection card. I remember this, my storming away and his conciliation, just a bit before the next blow.

" It's none of your business where I go," I tell him, feeling how untrue that is as I say it. I know he must feel it, too.

" I'm just asking," he says, his hands going to my waist. I lean away from him and end up pressed against the door, his body hot along my back, a familiar feeling. His breath is soft on my neck, and then his lips, just the slightest kiss.

" Don't do that," I plead. He smells the same, like fire and oranges, that absurd combination, only the fire is now more like ash, and the oranges damp, as if they've fallen from the tree and are waiting on the ground, overripe.

" I wanted to come and get you," he whispers. " What was I supposed to do? I can't show my face out there, I'd be torn apart. And you think I wanted to send one of those dirty old fuckers after you? They knew what we were about."

" You could have sent Tseng sooner." My pulse is racing. I feel like he's crushing the air out of me, and I don't mind it so much. I shut my eyes against the door, which smells like mold, and sex. This whole place reeks of sex, of course. I have to get out of here.

" He was our biggest critic," he reminds me.

" Since when do you give a shit?" I ask in a scoff. His mouth is on my neck, somewhere between a kiss and a lick, moving down toward my shoulder.

" My pride is all I have left," he says, laughing darkly.

" Sorry I'm so embarrassing for you."

" Desire is weakness," he explains, one hand snaking around toward my stomach. But I elbow myself out of his grip at the mention of weakness.

" Just get off of me," I snap, walking away from him, across the room.

" Alright, you have to have your hissy fit, I suppose," he says, irritated, straightening his hair. " You have to feel betrayed and mope, that's what you do, I forgot."

" Fuck off." I'm standing still in the middle of the room, hands on my hips, pacing here and there but not leaving, trying to figure out why I'm not already gone.

" Be as theatrical as you want, but don't tell anyone about me," he says, going back to his filing cabinet, arranging his papers. That's where he hides, in papers, secret documents, that was where he finally lost his mind. I remember finding him sitting on his living room floor in the middle of the night, papers spread out around him in circles, in mad schemes of organization: lab reports from before he was born, old newspaper clippings, Sephiroth's childhood diaries. After his father died he had access to everything, and his excitement over this drove him insane with minute information that, to him, added up to some kind of discoverable heaven on earth, among other things.

" What about Scarlet?" I ask, whirling on him. " She has a right to know you're alive."

" Why, so she can stop dancing on my grave?" he laughs. " Though I don't suppose I have a grave, do I? Who would have put it up? Certainly not her."

I look away, grateful that Tseng didn't tell him about the one I made for him, though it was clearly the impetus for his bringing me here.

" She cared about you," I tell him, staring at the ground. " She cried when you died. When we thought you died," I correct, glancing back to him to make sure. And there he is, though I still can't believe it, alive and smirking at me.

" I've never seen anyone cry like that," I mutter, thinking of it. He's stunned into silence for just a moment.

" What, you didn't top her yourself?" he asks, and I wait for him to laugh at me again, but he almost looks serious.

" I thought you were _dead_," I say, not answering him.

" Well, I'm not!" he says, throwing up his hands. " What do you want me to do about it?"

I wait for him to apologize, something, but he goes back to flipping through his papers.

" I've got to go," I mutter, trying to move my feet, to remember how to walk.

" Don't tell Scarlet," he says, not looking up.

" Why the hell not?"

" Because I asked you not to," he says tightly, giving me a burning look. " Don't tell anyone, Reno, I mean it. My goddamn life is at stake here."

" You always thought everyone was trying to kill you."

" Well, they were. I _died_, didn't I?" He smiles to himself.

" Only because of your own fucked up machinations."

" Machinations!" he says brightly, beaming at me. " Where on earth did you learn that word? And weren't you leaving?"

" I hate you," I fume, going for the door.

" Yes, yes," he sighs. " You'll come back, won't you?"

I'm so stunned by the fact that he phrased that as a question that I get to the door and don't know what to do for a minute. Then I remember how doors work and pull it open.

" Hey," he says, stopping me. I look over my shoulder, see him out of the corner of my eye, clutching that file, his precious papers.

" Am I going to have to take up smoking again?" he asks.

" What?"

" Like that year in Junon," he says, making me turn to face him. He looks suddenly small and desperate in the middle of the soggy room, the hub of his pathetic new palace.

" I started smoking cigarettes because they tasted like you," he tells me, trying to smile, to laugh it off, but his bottom lip only trembles with the attempt.

" I can't," I say in a whine, but I already am, walking to him and taking his face in my hands, his pale cheeks cold to the touch, my little ghost. I kiss him and pinch my eyes shut tight, waiting to forget. But this time I don't, though he tastes good, like milk and honey, like the goddamned promised land. Still, I can't forget, and all I see when I'm kissing him is Cloud, waist deep in swirling water and sinking fast.

" I have to go," I stammer, half against his lips and then on my way to the door, almost breaking into a run.

" Okay," I hear him say weakly as I go, and then the papers hit the floor again, scattering with a swish, like flock of birds making a break for it.

* * *

Outside the sun is up, and too bright, and I wonder how long I was in there. I start to run back toward the dormitories, but get too tired a third of the way there and stop to lean against the side of a laundry shop, getting my breath. When I look up again the world tilts and shifts and I'm afraid I'll throw up or faint, but it passes.

Walking through the dusty streets, I keep trying to convince myself that what just happened was real. At the same time, I'm trying to decide if I want to believe it or not. Rufus is alive. Maybe I imagined the other part, the past four months without him. Maybe nothing has changed.

But I look up at the skyline and the towering buildings are gone, the plate is crumbled and broken and useless, and all that is left are the slums I'm walking through. And it's all real, the apocalypse and the ghosts and the too uncertain future.

I start jogging again when I get within a mile of the dorms, slow and pathetic, my feet landing wrong a few times and causing me to stumble forward awkwardly. When I finally get there I'm dizzy and out of breath again, and I fall onto the sidewalk by the front doors and sit down, try to get the world to stop tipping wildly around me. I put my head in my hands and stare down at the concrete, wait for something to come, some kind of forgiveness or acceptance or really any coherent thought. At this point I'd even take another ghost, another Weapon crashing through what's left of the city, anything to distract me from the reality I now have to deal with.

But nothing comes, so I get up and go inside, head for the stairs. I decide I just need to hide under the covers with Cloud for awhile. But the thought of facing him now makes my stomach hurt, and I have to stop on the stairs for a moment. I'm afraid he'll know, somehow, that he already knows, that he's just up there waiting to give me one last dirty look before he dives out the window. But no, I'm giving myself too much credit there – he'd just crawl back to Tifa, right? And me back to Rufus, I guess. Unless I've already done that.

When I come to the tenth floor landing I'm a little afraid to open the door to what is now our apartment. The thought is strange, maybe even a little repulsive now that Rufus has risen from the grave he never had. I realize when I put my hand on the doorknob that I'm damned either way: I can stay with Cloud and leave Rufus to disintegrate into his madness, or I can run back to Rufus and leave Cloud to God knows what. Activism? A crusade against Rufus and the second coming of Shinra? I actually laugh to myself at the thought as I cross the kitchen. Now that would really be something, wouldn't it?

" Cloud?" My bedroom is empty – our bedroom? Either way, he's gone, and the bed isn't made, which alarms me. He always makes the bed. I pretend that it irritates me – it doesn't make any sense, after all, when we're only going to muss it up again, usually by lunchtime. But now that it's left unmade I feel startled and sick, and I can't stop staring at it.

" Cloud," I call again, less like a question now. He's not here, but—

I remember his appointment and sink down to the floor. I was supposed to go with him to Kalm, to get those stitches out. Sitting with my back against the bed, I look around the room, at the dirty clothes on the floor. They're all mine. His have been folded and are stacked on a chair in the far corner, by the bathroom. They're still here, but even as I look at them I feel like he's already gone. Rufus is back and he's reclaimed me. I think of somehow going to Kalm; maybe if I ran the whole way there I would make it in time. But no, the fucking appointment was an hour ago.

The apartment is silent. Elena's things, stacked by the door this morning, are gone. The halls outside are empty, everyone off at the work site. I think of just walking back to Wall Market, giving in and collapsing onto that red couch, lying there until Rufus is done having his meetings and arranging his papers. Or maybe Tseng would have some work for me. The more things change, the more they stay the motherfucking same. I should really just go now and cut my losses, but I stay on the floor, wondering how soon Cloud will be back.

Eventually I can't take the quiet anymore, and I leave the apartment and head outside. The sun is harsh on my back as I walk toward the work site, and I can hear the familiar scrape of shovels and the hollow crash of twisted metal being stacked into wheelbarrows. They are idiots, really. Rufus is crazy, but so are they. Anyone who thinks they can reign Midgar back in must be. It's gone wild, we've lost any hope of controlling it, and we're only digging our own graves, staying here.

I search the crews until I see Elena's blond ponytail sticking out from the back of the handkerchief she's tied around her hair. My stomach growls as I walk to her, and I wonder if I'll ever feel like eating again. It seems irrelevant, suddenly. Drinking, however, sounds like a brilliant fucking idea.

" Laney," I call, not meaning for my voice to sound so battered and pitiful, but it's hard to use that nickname for her without a little affectation. I only call her Laney when I need her to act like my mother.

She turns abruptly, recognizing this, and pulls her goggles off.

" Reno," she says, frowning. " What's the matter? You look—is Tseng alright?" she asks, her face changing.

" He's fine, so far as I know," I mutter with a scoff, kicking pebbles.

" Okay." She sticks her shovel in the dirt, takes off her gloves. " What's going on? Did Cloud find you?"

" He was looking for me?" I mumble, not meeting her eyes.

" Yeah, earlier this morning."

" I need to talk to you," I say, a cold sweat gathering on my forehead and upper lip. I didn't come here to tell her about Rufus, but now that she's standing in front of me, I can't lie to her. Or maybe it's more that if I don't tell someone, I'm going to lose my mind.

" What's wrong?" she asks, stepping closer, touching my arm.

" Let's walk," I jerk my head around as if looking for spies. I feel like Midgar itself will overhear and whisper back to Rufus that I've disobeyed him. Elena follows me off of the work site, all the way to what used to be the outer wall of the city. It's still a wall, but it's cracked and broken all over, and you can peer through the missing places now, see the green outside. I go to one of the breaks in the wall that used to shelter Sector Four and look out over the surrounding fields.

" Alright, Reno, what is it?" Elena asks, getting impatient. I can tell by her tone that she doesn't necessarily believe that Tseng is alright yet.

" Tseng came and got me this morning," I say, trying to swallow the tightness in my throat. " He wanted to show me something."

" Is he okay?" she asks again, panic rising. " Where is he?"

" He's with Rufus, I imagine," I mumble, running my fingers over the rough concrete wall, trying to distract myself from my heart tremoring in the back of my mouth. I feel like I'm going to choke on my betrayal, but I've already said it, done it. I thought I'd feel a little free, but I don't.

" Rufus?" she says. " What do you mean?"

" He's alive," I tell her, looking up into her eyes. She only frowns, clearly doesn't believe me. " Tseng was right."

" What do you mean, _Tseng was right_?" She slumps against the wall, pushed down by the weight of shouldering some of my burden.

" He knew Rufus was alive."

" Rufus _Shinra_?" she stands now, paces a little, glares at me. " What the hell do you mean?"

" I mean he never died," I say, making my voice a little mean to hide the shake. " He didn't explain how. But he's been hiding all this time."

" You _saw _him?"

I nod, and she falls onto the wall again.

" It's a secret," I tell her, guilty already.

_My goddamn life is at stake here_.

" You can't tell anyone, and you can't tell Tseng I told you."

" Why wouldn't he tell me?" she asks, thinking aloud, not looking at me.

" Elena, did you hear me?" I ask, grabbing her arm.

" Reno, what's going on?" she asks, distraught.

" He's alive. I don't know how. I don't . . . know what to do."

We're both silent for a moment, looking out through the broken wall, away from Midgar, at the wind through the grass.

" And Tseng knew?"

" Elena!" I start to walk away and then change my mind, turn and slam my fists into the concrete wall. She starts a little, but stays in place.

" Yes, he knew," I moan, leaning there with my throbbing hands still on the wall, staring at the ground. There's a lipstick canister in among the dust and debris at my feet.

" He knew, and he didn't tell either of us."

" He told you, apparently," she says curtly.

" I didn't tell you this to upset you or to get you pissed off at Tseng," I say, sighing, straightening.

" Aren't you pissed off at him?" she asks, folding her arms over her chest.

" Yes."

" Well."

" I just don't know what to do," I say, stopping myself before it turns into a full fledged whine. " Do you understand what I'm saying, here? Rufus is _alive_, Elena, he's been alive all this time."  
She sighs, touches my shoulder, rubs at her temples.

" Oh, God," she says, more sympathetic now. " Were you – are you – happy?"

" I don't know." No. Yes? Not happy, exactly. Certainly not relieved. But I can't deny that I wouldn't want to lose him again. I can't deny that part of me wants to go tearing back there, to hide in his maniac world until all of this blows over. But that's the problem with trying to take comfort in Rufus: he is the thing that must blow over, most of the time.

" What did Cloud say?" Elena asks, chewing her lip raw.

" Huh? Nothing, I haven't told him. We can't tell anyone."

" What about Rude?" she asks after a long pause.

" Rude, okay. But not Cloud."

" Reno."

" Not yet, anyway."

I reach down and pull the lipstick out of the dirt, brush it off and glance down into the open tube. It's purplish and caked with mud. I point it at Elena and she scowls and leans back.

" Are you crazy?" she moans.

" Probably."

" What are you going to do about Rufus?" she asks with an enormous sigh.

" Who says I have to do anything?" I answer unconvincingly. She gives me a look and I roll my eyes.

" I haven't decided yet," I mutter.

" But Cloud—"

" I know, Elena."

" I just can't believe he's alive." She leans on my shoulder and I throw an arm around her, toss the ruined lipstick back into the dirt.

" Yeah, it's like, who's next?" I mutter. I think of Aeris showing up at the dorms, smiling and clean and pretty and full of wild explanations about how all of this is possible. Maybe she'd just come out and it say it: You know what, folks? There is no death. I went ahead and conquered that, too, while I was in the neighborhood, performing miracles.

Cloud would go back to her without a second thought – who the hell would blame him? – and I would be, of course, ruined, even with Rufus as a consolation prize.

" I've got to go," I tell Elena, thinking of it, pushing off the wall. She follows me back toward the work site, and stops me before I head off for the dorms, grabbing my arm.

" Maybe you and Cloud should leave town for awhile," she says hopefully.

" We were going to go to Wutai."

" Good!" she says, trying for a smile. " Go, really. And then come back, and – we'll figure it all out."

" Thanks, Lane."

I appreciate the lie, though it doesn't really make me feel any better as I make my way to the dorms, knowing what's waiting for me there. His disappointment, and me – what? Lying to him? Just throwing up my hands and walking out the door, for his sake? I'm not sure what my plan is, but I feel suddenly desperate to see him, and I break into a run when I come to the front doors, jog all the way up the stairs. If Rufus can suddenly reappear, Cloud could just as easily disappear, and I'm not ready to give him up.

* * *

It's another couple of hours before I hear the key in the door, and I've driven myself crazy in the intervening time, pacing the floors, opening and shutting all of the windows, showering twice. For awhile I can't remember what the hell I usually fill my days with, and then I realize it's Cloud. I'm dying to get drunk, but I know I need to have my wits about me when he returns, so I only have three modest gulps of the brandy I've been using as a painkiller since my ribs took a beating. It doesn't help, only makes me want to drink more.

When I finally hear him coming in I'm lying on the bed with my head hanging over the edge of the mattress, the blood pooling in my skull, making me feel dizzy and calm. But when the front door opens I immediately shift back into panic mode and roll backward off the bed, landing hard on the floor, my still-empty stomach lurching.

I stand up and stumble out toward the kitchen, where I see not only Cloud but Tifa walking into the apartment. I give her a quick grimace of disapproval before looking back to Cloud, whose arms are still bandaged.

" Good going, Reno," Tifa snaps. " He had an infection."

Cloud sits down at the kitchen table and puts his head in his hands like he's just been given his death sentence. I frown and try to process the situation, looking from him to her.

" What do you mean, an infection?" I ask, going to sit down across from him. He looks up at me and keeps a hand over his mouth. There are circles under his eyes, and he seems exhausted. Tifa doesn't look so hot herself, pale and sweaty, her long hair hanging messy and matted around her shoulders.

" They gave him some kind of ointment, he'll be fine," she tells me, watching him warily. She's clearly morphed back into his nursemaid now that I've let him down. " But the doctor said there was a mild infection because the wounds hadn't been cleaned well enough."

That figures, I think, staring at him. I wonder why he's not storming off and hating me, only sitting there and looking tired and hopeless.

" It's my fault," he finally says, speaking through his hand. " I've been distracted this past week."

" Right, because this idiot had to go and nearly get himself killed," Tifa says, glaring at me. I remember what she told me once, that I couldn't fall apart, that Cloud wouldn't be able to handle taking care of me. She was wrong, but I still feel like I've poisoned him, crept selfishly into his veins. I glance down at the still-bandaged arms.

" Did you get the stitches out, at least?" I ask. He nods.

" I'm going," Tifa says with a sigh, and Cloud looks up at her meaningfully. She rushes to him and hugs his shoulders, and my nerves prickle at the sight of it, hypocritically.

" Alright," she says to him. " Come and get me if you need anything else."

" Thanks, Tifa."

She gives me an irritated look before going to the door, and he turns to stop her.

" Hey," he calls, twisting in his chair. " You too. If you need anything."

She smiles sadly and opens the door, slips out into the hall. When she's gone I scoff dramatically and look to Cloud, my eyes narrowed.

" What the hell was that about?" I ask, pissed off, though I have no right to be.

" Tifa's my friend," he says coldly, standing and heading for the bedroom. " You wouldn't understand," he mutters over his shoulder. That fucking phrase sets me off, and I jump out of my chair and run over to him, turn him around and pin him to the wall beside our bedroom door. He winces and I wilt, realizing it's Rufus I'm really trying to hurt. I _wouldn't understand_. Right, right, that's the way it's always been.

" What the fuck's the matter with you?" he shouts, shoving me off. " Where were you this morning?" he adds, glaring at me.

" Nothing – nowhere," I grumble, going into the bedroom. This is not quite how I wanted things to go. Of course he ran to goddamn Tifa when I abandoned him. I shouldn't be surprised, or upset, but I am. I want to take it all back, just run away to Wutai, like Elena suggested. I know it's too much to ask, far more than I deserve, but it's still what I want, even with Rufus waiting on the other side of town.

Cloud goes to his chair and opens the window, sits down heavily, his hands folded over his chest. I fall onto the bed and watch him, waiting for more, but he only puts a hand to his forehead and shuts his eyes, like he's got a headache.

" I'm sorry," I mumble. " I – something came up."

" What?"

" Tseng needed me for something," I say, my ribs aching, though it's not exactly a lie.

" Right," he mutters, looking out at the city.

" I'm really sorry," I say again.

" Shit," he whispers, pinching the bridge of his nose.

" What's wrong?"

" Nothing – I – my cuts sting. It's this ointment stuff—Reno, I told you, I don't want you to leave without telling me," he interjects suddenly.

" So you think you can give me fucking orders now?" I bark, harsher than I meant to, thinking of Rufus.

" That was the way she left me," he mumbles after a pause. " One morning I woke up and she was gone."

" You sound like a broken record," I growl. I'm not sure why I'm being so cruel to him; I feel possessed. Maybe I want him to get mad, to accuse me of lying, to find me out. Why the hell isn't he screaming at me, at least for not going to Kalm with him?

" What?" he asks faintly, his shoulders sinking.

" Everything I do reminds you of some goddamn tragedy," I say, and it feels almost true, but I instantly regret saying it out loud. I just want to drop into his lap, and I have to sit on my hands to stop myself from reaching for him. It wouldn't be fair. I shouldn't be able to get any comfort from him now.

He's quiet for awhile, looking out the window, and I'm afraid he'll start crying. I think of storming off, apologizing, or just picking him up and throwing him on the bed. Nothing seems right, so I sit still, my hands tense on the mattress, squeezing the unmade sheets into my palms.

" I had kind of a bad day," he finally says, his voice small and strained.

" Me too," I say with a dark scoff. " Ready to run away to Wutai?" I ask, not really kidding, though the thought of not returning to Rufus is terrifying. I'm not sure what I want from him anymore, but I know what he needs from me, and I can't pretend that I don't at least wish that I could give it to him.

" I can't," he says, looking to me, his eyes dim.

" Why not?"

" Reno," he moans, finally standing and crossing to the bed. He puts his arms around my shoulders and crouches over my lap, and I fall backward, pulling him down with me. He's so weary and forgiving, I should just tell him, I know, all about Rufus and how bad things might very well get before the end. But instead I let him kiss me, leaning up to meet his mouth until my neck is sore from the strain. When my head drops back onto the mattress I let out my breath and shut my eyes, and he climbs over me and drags me toward the pillows. He puts his head on my shoulder and throws a leg over me, holds on like he might get swept away if he doesn't.

" I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I mumble into his hair, squeezing my eyes shut, breathing him in. He smells like that goddamn hospital, and I hate that he went there with Tifa. It's practically our second home; I should have been there with him.

" It's alright," he mumbles, lifting his head to kiss my neck. I almost want to jerk away, thinking of Rufus's lips there, as if they've left some damning trail of evidence. But he doesn't seem to notice, only slides a hand up under my shirt and touches my stomach, which complains with a loud gurgle. He laughs a little.

" Have you eaten anything today?" he asks, lips moving just under my jawbone.

" Nope."

" Me either."

" What the fuck's wrong with us?" I moan, unfastening my pants.

" I don't know," he says. " A lot of things."

We both laugh, and I feel normal for a moment, if normal suddenly means lying in a bed with Cloud Strife and laughing as we lazily pull off our clothes. But sure, I'll take it, if just for a little while longer.

I think of pleading again to run away to Wutai, but I realize before speaking that I can't go, either. I can't leave now; maybe I won't ever be able to leave Midgar again. I feel the city chuckling to itself with fiendish delight as I kiss Cloud, trying to bury my fears in his mouth, his body, to escape into him. But I can't really hide behind him, because I'm hiding from him now, too. I push his legs aside and enter him with a grunt, wanting to try anyway, to forget a little bit. I feel wide awake for the first time in awhile, and it's not a pleasant sensation.

Still, his little moans do something for me, fill me up with temporary relief, and I let out a long, choppy breath and bend to whisper in his ear:

" You can scream as loud as you want now, baby. It's just us here."

It's such a goddamn lie, but I need him to believe it, even if I can't. Just us. As if it will ever be that simple again, as if it ever was. I can feel all of them standing in the room, or with their ears pressed to the door, not ghosts anymore, never ghosts, but haunting us both all the same. Tifa and Rufus and Reeve and Tseng and every last motherfucking one of them, thinking they should have a say in this, knowing that they can wedge themselves in whenever they want to.

I wait for him to take his cue, but he still half-swallows his groans, trying to keep himself in check, until he finishes. He screams my name then, like he's pleading with me, and maybe he is.

When we're done we huddle under the covers, both of us trembling with hunger and fatigue, and he kisses my closed eyes, breathing hard against my cheeks.

" We should eat something," I mumble, settling in against him.

" Still got that peanut butter in the drawer?" he asks. I nod and roll over to dig it out. The crackers are in there, too, and I toss them to him.

" You're getting crumbs everywhere," I complain as we lean against the headboard, our shoulders pressed together, dipping the crackers in the jar and munching on them.

" So are you."

" I won't leave you like that again," I say in a rush, before I can stop myself. " Not while you're sleeping."

" I know you won't," he says with a mouthful.

" Cocky," I grumble, pushing his shoulder. He grins.

" How will you leave me, then?" he asks, not looking at me.

" In a blaze of fire, kid," I joke, my cheeks burning, heart sinking, whole body giving me away.

" Don't call me kid."

When we finish our crackers we both have a slug of brandy and I shake the sheet out the window to get rid of the crumbs.

" You aren't going out to work, are you?" I ask, walking back to the bed and wrapping the sheet around his shoulders.

" You aren't going to let me, are you?" he asks with a smirk, and I shake my head.

" Hell no."

" That's what I thought." He pulls me to him, inside the sheet and onto the bed. I pick up one of his arms and look at the new bandages.

" How long do these have to stay on?"

" Just a few days, I think," he says with a shrug.

" Sorry about the infection thing," I say, kissing his palm, which is hot and smells like peanut butter.

" It's not your fault," he insists, though of course it is. Somehow I feel like all of this is my fault: Rufus being alive and flipping out, thinking he can restore Shinra to its former wicked glory, Cloud floundering in the wind before the coming storm.

" We'll go to Wutai someday," he promises suddenly, looking sorry himself.

" Yep," I say, unable to meet his eyes. " Someday."

* * *

I can't sleep, so I dress in boxers and wool pants and sit in Cloud's chair, alternately watching him doze on the bed and looking out the window to see Midgar staring indifferently in at me. Rufus is out there somewhere. I keep telling myself this; I've always thought so, that he was lost out there among the debris. I had to tell myself that it was just his body, that his spirit, or at least his consciousness, wasn't trapped under the ruined Tower. I was wrong, though. He was always out there but still Rufus, still trapped under the weight of the city.

The thought of him wandering the world again makes me feel jumpy and paranoid, like he might burst through my bedroom door any minute and laugh in the face of the new life I've fallen into. I know that the first word out of his mouth about Cloud would ruin this for me, that it would only be ridiculous and doomed if I had to filter it through his opinion. Feeling nervous, I climb back into bed and lie along Cloud's back protectively, sighing against his neck. He groans and shifts until I roll off of him.

" What?" he mumbles into the mattress.

" Nothing," I say, running a hand through his hair until it stands up straight. " I think I'm going to go try to find Tseng."

" Okay."

I put on one of his shirts, defensively, I think. It's dark green, and used to have some black lettering across the chest, but it's so worn that I can't make out the words. It's a little on the short side, but it smells like him, and makes me feel fearless as I leave our apartment and go upstairs.

I lift my hand to knock on Tseng's door, but it opens before I can. He's standing there with his duffel bag, wearing the same clean suit he had on this morning, and his eyes widen slightly when he sees me.

" I was just coming to find you," he says, stepping back so I can enter. I huff to myself, trying to work up a sizeable enough fury to throw at him, or maybe looking for something to break. But everything I lay eyes on looks like it belongs to Elena, and she's not the one I want to rip into pieces right now.

" You're supposed to be my friend, too," I blurt out, turning to face him. I'd planned on using that line later in my tirade, but it was the first one that came to mind, for some reason. He looks confused for a moment, then goes to lock the door.

" I know, Reno," he says when he turns back to me. " I'm sorry."

" You are not," I spit.

" I wanted to tell you sooner," he insists. " But you have to admit, he has a good reason for staying in the shadows right now."

" You don't seriously think he can make something of Shinra again, do you?" I ask with disbelief.

" I don't see why that idea is any more foolish than Avalanche's plan to rebuild Midgar using alternative energy that doesn't exist yet," he returns sharply.

" It's not, but . . .," I trail off, fall into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. I look over through the open bedroom at the bathroom where I found Cloud. I thought he was Rufus when I first saw him that day, which seems like it should mean something profound at this point, though I can't imagine what. Elena has hung gauzy curtains over the high window, and they billow out over the now-empty tub.

" I only found out where they were staying a few days ago," Tseng says, setting the duffel on the table and unzipping it. " Rufus _would_ chose a place like that for a base of operations," he adds, shaking his head to himself, as if Rufus is an impish five year old. _That little scamp!_

" Operations? What are they trying to do?"

" Do you really want to know?" Tseng asks, looking at me with suspicion.

" You never trusted me," I mutter, realizing that I actually don't want to know. If I find out exactly what Rufus is up to I'll feel responsible for stopping him, and I can't be responsible for anything else right now.

" I don't trust anyone, Reno," he says calmly, taking a folded piece of paper from the bag.

" Apparently not even Elena," I mumble, and he looks up at me and frowns.

" How do you know I haven't told her about Rufus?" he asks, his mouth going tight.

" Oh, fuck it. I told her. You knew I would."

He shakes his head slowly and hands me the piece of paper.

" I would have preferred to tell her myself," he says as I open it.

" Yeah, well. I would have preferred to be told about Rufus as soon as you found him. What the fuck is this?"

The note is from Rufus, asking me to come back, telling me he has something for me. I scoff.

" Why couldn't he just send it with you?" I ask, crumpling the paper into a tight ball in my fist.

" It wouldn't survive the trip," Tseng answers easily. " You're upset with him," he adds before I can ask him what the hell he means.

" He let me think he was dead," I remind him with a sneer.

" There were reasons for that," he assures me.

" Like what?"

" If all the Turks had disappeared, there would have been an investigation, especially since his body was never found."

" Don't tell me he set up the whole fake death thing himself," I say, staring at my shoes.

" He didn't," Tseng says, sitting down. " He claims Sephiroth saved him from the attack on the Tower, but he didn't explain how."

" Wasn't Sephiroth in the Northern Crater at the time?"

" He had an uncanny ability to be in more than one place at a time," Tseng says, touching his chest. " When he attacked me he wasn't quite – there. But he was still a physical presence."

" That doesn't make any fucking sense," I snort.

" Yes, well. Nothing about him did, really."

We're both quiet for a moment, and I unroll the crumpled note, smooth it out on the table.

" Tseng, what am I supposed to do?" I ask, begging for a mission, a solution, even if it's one I'm not going to like. I just want someone to tell me, after all, what to do. If I can shuffle the responsibility off onto someone else, I can't be at fault when things inevitably go up in flames.

" It's difficult," he says, rubbing his chin. " Like I said, I never had anything against Avalanche personally. But I believe our best chance is to continue to follow Rufus. Look at what the city has become without him. Gangs running things – you nearly died."

" That was my own fault," I mumble.

" No power, food shortages." Tseng shakes his head. " It's a disaster. Rufus still has liquid funds all over the world, and there are reactors that were buried underground for emergencies. The world can become civilized again."

" What if one of those things comes back?" I mutter. " If we keep sucking up mako? One of those Weapons."

" We'll develop ways to combat them," Tseng says with a shrug. " We've still got Scarlet."

" Rufus doesn't want her to know he's alive," I say.

" Not yet," Tseng confirms.

" It's not right."

" Right isn't exactly Rufus's philosophy," Tseng explains, as if I don't already know that. " He operates based on what works, not ideals or far flung hopes. He's the best chance, maybe not for the world, but for you and I. And what more is there?" he asks.

" What if Elena wants to have kids?" I ask, looking at the flowers he brought for her, still sitting in a vase on the kitchen counter, drinking in sunlight from the window over the sink.

" Excuse me?" he says, sitting up straighter.

" She might want to," I say with a shrug. " She'd be a damn good mother, you have to admit."

" I . . .," he stutters, touching his hair, uncomfortable.

" I'm just saying. There could be more, someday."

" I don't want my children to live in a world of gang rule and canned tuna," Tseng says defensively, glaring at me. " Should I someday have them," he adds, embarrassed.

" Some people would have felt lucky to get a can of tuna for dinner every night, back when Rufus was in charge," I remind him darkly.

" You never cared then," he says, leaning toward me. " What's changed, Reno? Is it Cloud Strife?"

" No," I answer quickly. " Nothing's changed. I'm just saying."

" Just saying," Tseng mutters, looking away. " Of course. So you'll be cooperating with us, then?"

" I'll do whatever the hell I want," I answer, anxious, trying to work up the nerve to rip Rufus's note into a thousand tiny pieces.

" What do you _want_, then?" Tseng asks, getting impatient.

I open my mouth, stare down at the note, holding the edges, waiting to come to a decision, as if I can figure it out in this moment.

" I guess I'll see what he's offering, first," I mutter, standing and shoving the note into my pocket. Tseng smiles.

" Eventually we'll all move into the old Corneo mansion," he tells me as I'm heading for the door. " It's surprisingly spacious."

" And Avalanche?" I ask, my hand on the doorknob.

" Conflicting leadership," Tseng mumbles. " The directive hasn't really changed. They'll disband or, you know."

" They're good people," I mutter, squeezing the doorknob so hard I'm afraid it might come off in my hand. " They helped save your life."

" And I'm grateful," he says casually. " Like I said, it's nothing personal."

" Elena won't like it," I tell him.

" She'll see the logic in it eventually," he says, dismissive. " She was always loyal to Shinra."

" There is no more Shinra," I whisper against the door, like a prayer.

" Don't be so glum," Tseng says. " Cloud used to work for Shinra. He was only a mercenary, after all. I'm sure Rufus would appreciate a skilled fighter in his employ, if you want to, you know. Bring him along."

" Are you crazy?" I scream, my face burning. " Rufus wouldn't – and Cloud – he would never turn on his friends!"

" I'm sorry you put yourself in this position," Tseng says, his face blank. " I tried to warn you. I always did, even back when it was just Rufus. It's bad politics to make things so personal."

" Bad politics?" I shout, with a disbelieving sneer. " How about you and Elena, you fucking hypocrite?"

" Remember when I used to ask you to cut your hair?" he asks calmly, folding his hands on the table. This is how it always goes: the more worked up and loud I get, the softer and more collected he becomes. It drives me up the goddamn wall.

" What the fuck are you talking about?"

" I wanted you to cut your hair, because it looked unprofessional," he explains coolly. " And you called me a hypocrite because I had long hair, too. But you couldn't see how different it was, Reno. I took care of my personal quirks, kept them neat and in line. Yours were messy. Nothing has changed, I fear."

" Go to hell," I growl, storming out and slamming the door behind me. Out in the hall Yuffie is talking with Shera, and they both turn and jump in surprise.

" You'll see how fucking clean you've kept things when she gets wind of what you want to do," I grumble to myself as I rush past them. Elena will never stand for "disbanding" Avalanche, which would essentially mean killing them. Or trying to. It's absurd that they even think they have a chance. Cloud could dismantle what's left of Shinra with one hand tied behind his back.

When I reach the tenth floor I realize in a panic that I don't know where I'm running to. I continue down the stairs and decide that I'll go to Rufus, only to face him and tell him I won't be coming back. But the thought stops me in my tracks. If I can't imagine myself standing against Avalanche again, I sure as shit can't see myself turning my back on the Turks and Rufus, and fighting against whatever bullshit they've got planned. Maybe I can talk him out of trying, I think hopelessly as I reach the lobby. Maybe there's some way we can all coexist.

There is no way, of course, and as the late afternoon sun starts to wane in the sky above me I know that I'm walking in the wrong direction, because every direction is wrong. Tseng is an infuriating ass, but he's right. I've fucked things up royal. There is literally no way out.

When I get to Corneo's there are five girls standing out in front, whispering to each other. They're young and not quite pretty, but they could be, if they weren't stick thin and dirty. They're all dressed in mini-skirts and tank tops, as if they never got the chance for a wardrobe change when the world got turned on its side.

" Spare some food?" one of them yells when they see me, and suddenly they're all headed in my direction like a pack of ravenous zombies. I stumble backward and look nervously toward the silent mansion.

" I can give you a cigarette," I say, patting my pockets and then remembering that I don't have a pack. Cloud doesn't like the taste of them on me, so I've stopped bumming them from Cid.

They don't look too thrilled at the prospect of a cigarette anyway, and their faces fall when they scan me and see I'm not carrying anything.

" Is the Don in there?" one of them asks me. She's got sunburned cheeks and stringy light brown hair, which hangs around her face in dirty strands.

" No," I say, backing away from them. " Nobody is."

They all give me looks that tell me they know I'm lying, and I sigh and walk away.

" Tell them we'll do whatever they want, for food!" another girl calls desperately. I think of Heidegger and Palmer and wonder why they haven't taken them up on that offer yet. It seems like the kind of thing they would want to take advantage of.

Maybe Tseng has a point, I think, reaching the side door and mimicking the knocks I heard him make earlier. People are starving, and Avalanche can't offer them anything but idealist blather about how much better off the planet is. Sure, some of them starved under Rufus, too. Maybe not as many? Maybe who's in charge doesn't matter at all. Someone's going to get screwed over, either way. Even if we all batted our naïve eyelashes and flooded into Cosmo Canyon, we'd wreck the place in days. It would be Midgar all over again, red rock walls replacing concrete ones, but otherwise the same.

" What are you, the butler?" I ask Palmer when he opens the door for me, huffing as if he had to jog to get there.

" Did anyone see you?" he asks me with aggravation, shoving me inside and shutting the door behind me.

" Yeah, that pack of girls," I say, walking ahead of him and into the darkness. " I assume you and fat bastard number two have been exchanging sex for food for some time now?"

" Of course not," he grumbles, pushing ahead of me. " They're just a bunch of worthless whores, out of work now. Who can think about sex during times like these?"

" Palmer, my God, are you talking about sex?" Rufus mumbles as we walk into the receiving room. He's stretched out on the couch, a file open in his lap. " That must mean Reno has arrived," he says with a grin, glancing up to confirm this.

" I'm here," I say, walking to the center of the room. " I don't know what the hell for."

" Don't you?" he murmurs, closing the file and getting up from the couch. Palmer seems to know that he's not wanted, and ducks out.

" What did you want to give me?" I ask Rufus when he's gone. It doesn't seem right that I'm back here so soon. I try to remember my brilliant plan to talk him down from his megalomania, but suddenly I'm only genuinely curious about what he has to offer me. The whole thing feels too damn familiar, and I think of Cloud lying in my bed, and I hope he'll stay there, wait for me. I won't be long, I tell myself, but Rufus is smiling in a way that makes me wonder if I'll ever get out of here alive.

" Come here, I'll show you," he says, taking my hand and leading me through the halls of the place until we come to a small kitchen. It doesn't look like Corneo did much cooking, and the place smells vaguely of garbage and beer. Rufus leads me to a refrigerator toward the back, which is plugged in and running on mako, and when he opens it I lean forward to feel the cold air on my face. It's so lovely and strange that it almost brings tears to my eyes, and I bask in the power of the mako poison that Rufus is hawking, understanding, for a moment, why things must be sacrificed for this kind of easy pleasure.

When Rufus reaches into the freezer to pull out a small container of ice cream, my mouth falls open and I'm ready to hand it all over: the world, my pride, anything he wants. I'm too excited to be very concerned about this sensation, and when he goes to a drawer and pulls out a spoon I actually start bouncing on my heels.

" I didn't think it existed anymore!" I gush, taking the cold container from Rufus and holding it reverently, though the frost stings my hands.

" Never thought I'd see you get so excited over something that wouldn't get you drunk," Rufus mutters with a smile, handing me the spoon. I tear the top off and break the perfect surface of the ice cream without hesitation, eating it like I've got a time limit. I'm not sure what the flavor is – something with chocolate and caramel, and every now and then I run into a brownie deposit.

" You knew exactly how I'd react," I say to Rufus as I eat. He leans on the counter.

" Just wanted to give you a little gift," he says, pleased with himself. " You seemed cross with me earlier."

" Cross," I say with a scoff, not looking at him, only staring at the ice cream as I scoop it onto the spoon.

" I can understand, from your perspective, how this all might have looked a little malicious at first glance," he muses.

" Malicious at first glance," I mutter, pointing the spoon at him. " That's you, Ruf."

" So you like it?" he asks, smiling slowly.

" Yeah, thanks," I say, pausing for a second to surrender to brain freeze and remember where I am. Maybe I shouldn't be so eager to accept his gifts. Didn't I come here to denounce him, or something like that?

" You want some?" I ask, offering him the spoon.

" No thank you, I had some for breakfast this morning," he says, pulling open the freezer again. I peer in and see stacks and stacks of the stuff: strawberry and mint chocolate and rum raisin. Don Corneo was obliviously a big fan.

" Still eating junk for breakfast, then?" I mutter, trying not to show how easily I might be won over by the thought of an ample supply of ice cream. He used to disgust even me with his surprisingly terrible diet, and rarely ate anything that wasn't comprised almost entirely of sugar or salt.

" It's not junk, it's the epitome of cuisine," he argues, poking me in the stomach. " You seem to be appreciating it yourself."

" I got into a fight with Tseng," I tell him, leaning against the counter and slowing down, starting to get a stomachache.

" Well, that's what you do."

He slides over to lean on my shoulder and I let him linger there until he reaches down to rub my side, his fingers wandering to the edge of my shirt, Cloud's shirt. I lean away from him, stick the spoon into the ice cream.

" I can't do this anymore," I say, not looking at him. Instead I stare at an old calendar on the wall of the kitchen. It's from last year, and features a picture of a nude girl lying on a beach, holding one of her boobs in her hand, her head thrown back in riotous laughter.

" Was that what the fight with Tseng was about?" he asks, pressing his cheek to the corner of the refrigerator now, and watching me with no sign of alarm.

I'm not sure if he's asking me if Tseng is still trying to get me to stop screwing around with him, or if he understands the broader implications of what I'm saying, or if I even understand them.

" I've got to go," I tell him, shaking my head.

" That used to be my line," he muses wistfully, and it's true. Rufus was always the one leaving. There was always somewhere more important he needed to be. Now he's stuck here, and I should drop everything, I guess, and keep him company. Or at least I feel like I should, despite everything. But I won't. Tseng asked me what I wanted, and in the grand scheme of things I have no idea. But at the moment I want to leave.

" Thanks for the ice cream," I say, going for the door.

" There's one more thing I want to give you," he says, stopping me. I turn back and he reaches into the pocket of his pants, pulls out a gun. It's small and silver, and he extends his arm, waiting for me to take it.

I put out my hand and he drops it into my palm, heavy and cold. I slip it into my own pocket before I have time to consider it.

" So you won't get anymore bruises," he says, walking over to pinch my cheek before sliding around me and out of the kitchen, down the hall, disappearing into a far room.

I leave Corneo's mansion and make my way out into the courtyard, where the girls from earlier have built a fire in an old oil can. They're huddled around it, though it's not cold, and when I come closer I see that they're roasting some tiny, skinned creature over the flames. I couldn't say for certain, but it looks like a rat.

" Here," I call, holding out the ice cream and the spoon. They stare at me suspiciously for a moment and then one hurries over and grabs both, followed quickly by all the others.

" Be fair!" one of them shouts, scrambling for the spoon. " Only one bite at a time!" I leave them to squabble over it, not particularly surprised or offended when they don't bother to thank me.

I lick sticky brownie bits from my teeth as I walk back toward Sector Four in the coming darkness. The gun is heavy in my pocket, and the thought of using it makes my heart hammer. So Rufus is worried about me. I never told him that I don't like guns, because it wasn't the sort of thing you told a guy when he'd hired you to wave them in people's faces. And also because Rufus isn't the sort of guy who inspires people to hand out unsolicited information. There is too great a chance, in every case, that he will use it against you eventually.

When I get back to the dorms I climb the stairs two at a time, making up my mind as I go. I'm done lying. The only way I can possibly work this out is to just flail around and readily admit that I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Cloud is sitting over the kitchen sink when I get home, eating tuna and looking out the window.

" Hey," he says when I come in. " Did you find Tseng? I was hoping you'd bring some food."

" I did, but we fought," I tell him, walking over. " So no food. What the hell are you doing?"

" Look," he says, pointing out the window. The sun is mostly gone, and he's pointing to a particularly bright star in the western sky, shining almost blue in the distance.

" I'm trying to remember the name of that star," he mutters. " I think I learned it once, in Cosmo Canyon. Or maybe not the name, but I recognize it, anyhow. Bugenhagen had this observatory and he took me and Aeris up there one night – it was really something."

He stares out the window and then looks back to me, offers me the tuna. I take a piece of fish out and consider eating it, then decide I don't want to wash away the taste of ice cream yet, so I pop it in his mouth instead. He grins, chewing.

" What'd you fight about?" he asks.

" Mmm. The usual." I reach into my pocket. " Want a gun?" I ask, pulling it out and showing it to him. His eyes go wide.

" Where'd you get that?" he asks, taking it from me and weighing it in his hand. " Did Tseng find it?"  
" Rufus gave it to me," I say slowly, screwing up my mouth in a guilty way, not meeting his eyes. I hear him chewing tuna, waiting for more.

" So you've had it all this time?" he asks.

" No, he just gave it to me," I say, looking at him. I have to glance away again quickly, the mako stare burning against my eyes now that I'm being honest.

" He's actually alive," I tell him. " I just found out this morning."

Cloud sets the empty tuna can on the window sill and slides his legs around so that they're hanging off of the counter. I take a few steps back, not wanting to crowd him while he absorbs this.

" You're fucking kidding me," he says with a strange laugh, his unfocused stare directed toward the kitchen table.

" No. He must have gotten out of the Tower that day. He's been hiding all this time. I'm not supposed to be telling—"

" Rufus," Cloud says, nodding to himself, his eyes going a little wild. " Rufus is alive." He looks to me, waiting.

" Um. Yes."

" What the fuck is going on?" he screams, jumping off the counter and going to the table, slamming his fits down onto it so hard that it splinters at the corner. I back up against the wall, my mouth open, trying to figure out how to respond.

" Am I – I mean is this whole thing some kind of joke?" he rails, looking at me. I raise my shoulders to my ears, confused. This was not, exactly, how I expected him to take the news.

" Tseng is alive," he says, nodding to himself. " Alright, fine. But Rufus? Fucking Rufus Shinra never even died? Well, that's just great. Terrific! Who's next? Oh, let me think, um – Barrett's friend Dyne! He dove off a cliff but the fucker will probably waltz in any day now, right? How about Professor Gast? I saw him get gunned down on video tape, but I'm sure there's some way the universe could make my life even more of a fucking joke by bringing him back from the grave!"

" Cloud it's just—"

" Hey, maybe I'll get Sephiroth back!" he says, nodding to himself, his eyes going red. " Sure, why the fuck not? As long as it's not her. Every goddamn person in the world gets to come back, eventually, I'm sure, except mine. Except Aeris. Right. That's as much as I fucking deserve."

" Calm down, alright!" I shout back. " This is not about you. I mean I'm sorry, but you sound a little self absorbed right now, my tragic friend. How the hell do you think I feel?"

" I don't know, Reno, how does it feel?" he asks through gritted teeth. He crosses the kitchen and I'm suddenly very sorry I spoke as he grabs my arms and digs his fingers into my skin, gives me a good jerk back against the wall. " How does it feel to get everything you want, all the time, even when it should be impossible?"

" What the hell are you talking about?" I ask, though I know.

" First Tseng and now Rufus," he says, lifting his shoulders, laughing. " How does it feel? Really, tell me, I'd love to know what it's like."

I don't say anything, just wait for him to crack, and he does, sinking down to the floor, collapsing against my legs. He puts a hand on my shoe and shakes his head, wipes at his cheek.

" I just," he says, licking his lips, squeezing my foot. " I'd just like to know what the hell is going on."

" You and me both," I mutter, reaching down and pulling him up. Squatting, I throw him over my shoulder and stand with an enormous groan.

" What are you doing?" he asks as I start to walk toward the bedroom, very slowly.

" I was going to carry you to the bed," I say, giving up and falling to the floor, where he slides off of me and lands on his back. " But fuck that. You need to lose some weight." I lie down next to him and we both stare at the ceiling.

" Guess I'm eating too much tuna," he mutters, sniffling. " Is Rufus really alive?"

" Yes."

" How?" he asks, throwing up his hands, as if he's waiting for a god's answer, not mine.

" Hell if I know," I say, letting out my breath. " I can't get a straight answer from him to save my goddamn life. You can't tell anyone, alright?"

" Why not?" he asks.

" Just don't. As a favor to me."

He moans, rubs at his face.

" So you're going to go – live with him, or whatever?" he asks, his hands over his eyes. " Is he in Midgar?"

" Yes – yes he's in Midgar. But I'm not – going anywhere."

We're both quiet for awhile, listening to the sounds coming from other apartments. Someone turns on the water in the kitchen upstairs, feet shuffle through the corridor outside, there's laughter through the window.

" Did you tell Rufus that?" he asks.

" Kind of. Sort of. No, I guess I didn't."

" You going to?"

" Sure, I just. I don't want to . . . crush him, I guess."

" I remember talking to him right after his father died," Cloud says. " He was out on a balcony attached to his office. If I didn't know that sword stuck in the president's back so well I would have thought Rufus did it."

" Maybe he and Sephiroth did it together," I say, though I know they didn't. " They're supposed to be brothers or something."

" _What_?" Cloud asks, sitting on an elbow and laughing.

" I don't know," I moan, pulling him onto me. " The whole thing's kind of fucked up."

" No kidding." He bends down to kiss me, and when his tongue meets mine he shoots up abruptly.

" What is that you've been eating?" he asks. " Chocolate?"

I open my mouth to tell him about the ice cream, but that would mean telling him about the mako power, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to be that honest yet. If he found out about that he'd feel like he had to tell Tifa, and then the shit would really hit the fan. I feel bad enough that I've betrayed Rufus twice today, and to Cloud, of all people.

" Yeah, he gave me a candy bar along with the gun," I lie.

" You didn't save any for me?" he asks, legitimately disappointed.

" It wouldn't have seemed right, really," I tell him.

" But you gave me the gun."

" You want it, then?" I ask. He looks up at where he left it on the table, shining in the light through the window.

" Sure, I guess," he says. " Though I wasn't really planning on shooting anyone."

My stomach pitches and I have to sit up, to lean against his shoulder.

" Hey, c'mere," he says, tipping my chin up toward his face. He kisses me, and shuts his eyes, smiles. " You taste so fucking good," he mutters against my lips, and I laugh, though I feel like the worst kind of traitor.

He thinks it's candy he's tasting, but it's really something else, so much more than he understands.

* * *

A/N: There will be more flashbacks/background information in the next chapter, I just wanted to return to the present for awhile. Also, the stuff about Rufus's mother and Sephiroth will become clearer over time, but there's a reason it's obscured for now. I've plotted out all of my remaining chapters at last (I think there are going to be 21 total, which is crazy, I know. This thing is going to be 500 pages long before the end, I can see it now . . .), and I decided to include one huge and somewhat shocking plot twist that I hope will work out well . . .! Anyway, as always, let me know what you think, if anything is confusing, and thanks so much for all the reviews and feedback on the previous chapter! 


	10. Chapter 10

10.

You've been telling me you're a genius since you were seventeen.

In all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean.

--Steely Dan

As autumn creeps closer, the winds arrive in Midgar. For all we know they have always come with the change of the season, but we've never felt them this harshly before, as we had the walls to keep them out. Now they begin around noon and don't let up until well after midnight, blowing relentlessly against us as we move through the remnants of the city, as if the planet has already begun its retaliation against the new-old leadership, still hiding in Wall Market, waiting to make its first move.

Cloud and I are walking through the dust storm after lunch, trying not to laugh because sand and dirt will blow into our mouths if we do. But there is something funny about it, the blast of hot afternoon wind, full of grit and pushing against us while we try to make our way back to work, as if it's warning us away.

" Shit!" I scream over the sandstorm, my eyes shut. Cloud falls against my side and grabs my arm, and I let him pull me blindly along, laughing with my mouth shut. The sensation forces happy spasms in my stomach, and by the time we reach the outskirts of the work site I'm hiccupping like a madman. The sound of my hiccups sends Cloud over the edge, and he leans onto my shoulder to laugh against the safety of my sleeve, wind blasting us from all sides.

" I told you we should have worn our goggles back to the dorms," he says, his lips close to my ear. Though we're just back from our lunchtime roll in the hay I'm a little thrilled all over again, just to have his tongue so close to giving my earlobe a lick like the ones he offered earlier, when he was perched on top of me, sweaty and breathing fast, bending down to issue the weather report.

" The wind's started," he had panted in my ear, and I looked over to see the windows, which were always shut now, start rattling.

" I'm not wearing those dorky goggles any longer than I have to," I tell him again as we head over to pick up where we left off. Somewhere in the sandy fog swirling around us I can hear Elena shouting over the wind, probably trying to find Rude, who has taken to wandering off since the weather changed.

" How long do you think they'll keep this up?" I ask Cloud as I pull my goggles back on, blinking behind their protection with relief.

" As long as it's not blowing people away, I guess," he says with a shrug, picking up his shovel.

" It's moronic!" I scream into the wind, almost happily. Cloud slings his shovel over his shoulder.

" Then why are you here?" he asks, though he knows. I'm here because he is.

It's hard not to notice, though, that this clean-up endeavor has become more futile and absurd than ever before, with the work done by noon nearly erased by the winds that sweep in from the west, covering everything with dirt and turning over carefully gathered piles of rubbish. And my presence here is the most ridiculous joke of all, since I head over to the enemy's secret camp when the work day ends.

Cloud knows about that, about my daily visits to Rufus. We haven't talked about it, but he knows where I go, and why. I can't just abandon him. And Cloud is more merciful than I ever imagined, not because he isn't holding my trips to Wall Market against me, but because he hasn't asked yet about what I'm sure he knows Rufus is planning for the remains of the world, the sorry leftovers that his friends can only hopelessly poke at with shovels, praying that a resolution will present itself.

It infuriates me, actually, the fact that he's so forgiving. When I come home from the Corneo mansion after spending hours lolling about in Rufus's air conditioned world of privilege, I want Cloud to hate me at least a little, because I do, to turn a cold shoulder.

Well. What I really want him to do is turn me over the side of the bed and pour all of his silent resentment into fucking my brains out. Because it's not like I'm getting from Rufus anymore, either.

" So I've noticed we're not fucking," he said to me last night, over a game of checkers laid out on the Don's old bed, fit with plush green sheets that he'd gotten from God knows where.

" Hmm." I kept my eyes on the board. No one has yet told him about Cloud, and I wasn't about to be the one to drop the bomb.

" You're still upset with me for being dead?" he asked incredulously, as if I was the unreasonable one.

" Checkmate," I muttered, my face hot.

" That's chess, you idiot," he said in a sigh, rolling onto his back.

" Oh, right."

All I can do is keep twisting aimlessly in the wind, stuck in this routine, until one of them does something, changes something, makes it clear to me what I actually want. The only scenario that seems ideal to me lately is lying in bed with Cloud, but I can't stay there forever, much as I'd like to try. So I'm stuck out here, shoveling dirt that blows back over my shoulder before I can dump it anywhere, and it's stupid, and depressing, and doomed, but it's where he is, and so here I am.

Until dusk, of course, which is coming sooner every day as the end of the summer draws closer. When the sun starts to dip I'll toss my mask and goggles in the communal pile, stick my shovel in the dirt, and cast a last glance back at Cloud before heading off in the direction of Wall Market.

Usually he doesn't look back, but I think he can sense it, somehow, so I never leave without turning his way apologetically for a moment.

Beats the hell out of me, why he doesn't want to take this opportunity to turn me over and give it to me good when I get home, why he seems to want _me_ to take _him_ that way all the more. I almost want to tell him, to goad him on, that I like going to see Rufus, that it's not just an obligation, that all day long I wish I was lounging in his parlors, drinking too-sweet wine and chain smoking, exchanging insults with his lackeys and waiting to reclaim the world.

But at night I'm grateful for Cloud. When I roll over not knowing where I am, what time it is, or if the wind will just keep getting stronger until it blows what's left of humanity off the face of the earth – well, when it comes to that, he's the only one I want to reach across the bed to find.

* * *

The girls are waiting for me when I reach the old mansion in the back of Wall Market. They've figured out my schedule, and are standing in the trashed courtyard with maniac grins on their faces as I approach. There are eight of them now.

" What you got for us today, Reno?" the loudest of them, a girl with short, black hair who acts as a sort of spokesperson for the group, calls out. I don't know exactly how they learned my name.

" Just some jerky, ladies," I say, reaching into my pockets and pulling out four packets of the stuff. They snatch them from me hungrily and tear at the plastic wrappers, working on them as if they've already forgotten I'm here. I stand in the middle of the milieu of ripping packages and overzealous chewing for a moment, staring up at the darkened porch that hangs out from what used to be Coreno's bedroom. I don't know why I've been bringing food to these girls. I don't know why I do a lot of things, these days.

Palmer lets me in and leads me down the dark corridor into the center of the place. I can smell food, and my stomach rumbles, thinking of all I've had to eat so far today: five crackers for breakfast and a tuna sandwich for lunch. When we come into the dining room a modest feast has been laid out on the garish table, which is long and painted with a bright red lacquer. Rufus is sitting on the stairs, passing a glass of whiskey back and forth between his hands. When he sees me he stops and stands up, drinks.

" You're a little early," he remarks. I walk over and look up at him, want to lean forward and smash my face into his chest. He has a particular smell just over his breastbone, or he did, and I used to press my nose there on the rare mornings when he stayed in bed with me. But Palmer is standing behind us, picking at the ham on the table, and Tseng is entering from the receiving room, clearing his throat, so I only take his glass of whiskey and have a swig. It's been diluted by melted ice, but it still burns against the back of my throat.

" I guess I walked faster than usual," I say with a shrug as he moves down past me, toward the table.

" I've got Gordon on the radio, sir," Tseng says, pointing back at the room behind him. " I think she's found someone."

" Ah, good," Rufus mutters, slinking out past him. " Start without me," he calls back over his shoulder.

Tseng and I come to the table, and he watches me slice up a block of cheese and eat pieces without crackers or bread, still a little frantically, though I'm starting to grow accustomed to eating this way in the evening. I always take my dinners here, and fill my pockets with things to bring back for Cloud, who eats with Elena, Tifa, and whatever other members of the clean up crew happen by to sample the small bounty of goods that Tseng sneaks back himself. I know I should feel guilty, pigging out in here while the girls outside salivate over jerky and Cloud and the others pick over a tenth of what Rufus and his cronies put away every night, but I try not to dwell on it. If I really stop to try and puzzle out my moral stance on anything I get an enormous headache, and usually resolve to quit while I'm ahead. I've always been this way, to some degree, but lately I can't even consider where I stand for half a second before my whole way of life threatens to rapidly unravel in the attempt. So I just eat up, Palmer going to town at the other end of the table, and Heidegger clamoring down from an upstairs room, rubbing his hands together.

" Ham again?" he says when he gets there. " Ah, well."

I want to peg him with a roll for complaining, but I only look up at Tseng, who hasn't taken a bite of anything yet, and is watching me as if he expects me to have something to say. We haven't been talking much since Rufus came back onto the scene. Passing in the halls at the dorms or in the darkness of this mansion, we'll only nod to each other and be on our way.

" Who's Gordon?" I ask him with a mouthful, not really expecting an answer.

" Don't worry about it," Heidegger barks before he can respond.

" An associate of Rufus'," Tseng answers. He's quickly becoming Rufus' second in command, and is obviously relishing his promotion over Heidegger, his former boss.

" So when are we going to have Elena and Rude over for supper?" I ask.

" There's not that much food to go around," Palmer says defensively, wiping mustard from the corner of his lips.

" Like hell!" I shout. " There's enough for ten people here."

" Elena's happy eating at the dorms for now," Tseng says tightly, moving over to a bar cart that sits against the far right wall. He takes a crystal glass and pours himself a brandy. I'm not sure Elena is really happy with anything at the moment, which is perhaps why he's been spending more and more time here.

" You've told Rude everything, then?" he asks me after a pause, and I nod, causing Palmer to throw down his fork in disgust.

" What did I tell you?" he shouts at Heidegger. " I knew bringing him back here would mean the whole worthless lot of them would come sniffing around before too long."

" Relax, tubby," I snarl. " No one's coming for your ham."

" How did he react?" Tseng asks, taking a seat at the table.

" You know Rude," I tell him with a shrug. " I think he hardly notices that the city got knocked to pieces, some days. He just sort of laughed and asked where Rufus had been all this time."

Tseng shakes his head, and the four of us go back to eating in silence, Palmer casting me the odd dirty look across the table.

" You ought to stop feeding that riff-raff outside, Reno," Heidegger says after some time has passed, his mouth full of mashed potatoes.

" Where's Rufus?" I mumble, not wanting to talk about that.

" They've started encroaching more and more on the property," he complains, looking over his shoulder. " Where the hell _is_ Rufus, Tseng?"

" On a long distance call," Tseng answers tightly, draining his brandy.

" With that woman from Mideel?" Heidegger asks. " Damn it all to hell," he mutters under his breath.

" What woman?" I ask, and down Palmer's fork goes again.

" Heidegger, we're in mixed company here!" he bellows, sputtering crumbs onto his shirt.

" Enough of that," Tseng snaps, glaring at him. " Reno can be trusted."

" None of you hoodlums were ever trusted with sensitive information before," Palmer grumbles, belching. " I still don't understand why he's brought you all around before Scarlet. Now there's a Shinra with a goddamn head on her shoulders."

" I suppose you're going to say next that the vice presidency should have gone to her?" Rufus asks, slinking into the room from the shadows. All of us sort of jump in our seats, though Palmer is the only one who has been caught doubting him this time. Rufus was infamous for these silent entrances back when he actually had a company to run, and it was usually Palmer, even then, who ended up shooting off his mouth at the wrong moment.

Palmer is frozen now, fork in his hand, waiting to come up with an explanation.

" Well, that's what all of you old timers always said," Rufus muses with a shrug, coming to pluck a grape from an arrangement of fruit in the middle of the table. He pops it in his mouth and makes a face, chewing. " These have gone sour," he mumbles.

" Not what I was saying at all, sir," Palmer is stammering. " I'm just – I suppose I'm confused as to why your sister hasn't, er, taken up residence here."

" I think she's been spending most of her nights in Rude's apartment," I say with a snort, starting to get drunk now. I take another gulp of the bad wine I've been drinking – Corneo had a terrifically disturbing taste in wine, and this one is not only sickeningly sweet, it has the faintest aftertaste of pine tar. Tseng gives me a dirty look across the table, as if to suggest that I should be more careful with my own sensitive information.

" That's a good match, actually," Rufus says after a thoughtful pause. " And if you've told Rude about me, I assume my sister will find out about everything any moment now," he adds, giving me a dark look.

" Hey, I told him not to mention it yet!" I say defensively, pouring myself another glass.

" Yes, we all know Rude is fabulous when it comes to keeping secrets," he moans, starting for the stairs.

" Where are you going?" I call. " Aren't you going to eat?"

" Later," he says in a sigh. " Heidegger, follow me. We have some calls to make."

" Calls," I grumble as Heidegger jumps from his place at the table, leaning over to take one last tear at a chicken leg before hurrying after Rufus. " All the phone lines in the entire city are down and he's making goddamn calls."

" He's using the radios," Tseng explains, wiping his mouth with his napkin. " I have to get back," he says. " You coming?"

" I'll be around later," I mumble, pushing chicken bones around on my plate. I don't want to leave without having a private audience with Rufus, though he's essentially ditched me. It's a familiar feeling, being left in the dust while he rushes around finalizing the plans for his grand schemes. It's almost comforting to be stuck inside a different den of corruption, still in the same situation, still waiting for Rufus to finish his business and give me the time of day. I want to believe that I'm coming here only to keep him company, so that he won't lose the last shreds of sanity he has left, but it might have more to do with my own sanity, or insanity, depending on which way you look at it.

It's another hour before Rufus descends the stairs again, and I spend it in the company of Palmer, punctuating his ranting with slurred protests.

" Why you all are wasting your time pretending to be goddamn planet-hugging volunteer martyrs is beyond me," he rails, hiccupping. " I say we strike fast and soon, too hell with all this spying. They don't have any plans! They've got nothing!"

" Ah, they did stop Sephiroth, you frothing old moron," I say, slinging a grape in his direction. It bounces off the side of his head, but he doesn't seem to notice.

" What're you, on their side now?" he shouts. " I knew it!"

" Reno's not on anyone's side," Rufus says evenly, suddenly descending the stairs behind me.

" Have you got some ninja blood in you or what?" I ask him drunkenly as he comes up behind me, laying a hand on the back of my chair. " Damn sneaky bastard," I mutter into my wine glass, tipping it back to get the last drop.

" He's a free agent," Rufus explains calmly, smirking in Palmer's direction.

" Whatever you say, boss," he mutters insincerely, stumbling out of his chair and off toward one of the far rooms. When he's gone Rufus pulls a hand through my hair, and I lean back to look up at him, grinning.

" Hey, Ruf, you oughta eat something," I say, pointing up at him.

" Oh, I had ice cream during my meeting with Heidegger," he tells me. " You're a mess. Am I going to have to put you up here tonight?"

" No, no," I say, shaking my head, opening my mouth to mention something about Cloud waiting for me, and then stopping myself, giggling stupidly at the close call. " I gotta go. You missed out. We were having a great discussion, Palmer and I."

" I'm sure." He runs his fingertips over the back of my neck, gives me goosebumps, makes me shudder. I laugh again, my eyes shut.

" Ruf, what's going on?" I mutter. " Who're you calling? What are you going to do?"

" I ought to tell you now," he says. " You'd have a hell of a time trying to remember in the morning."

" I don't really want to know," I say honestly, reaching up to take his hands, pulling them down over my eyes. " What I don't know won't hurt me."

" That's what I always loved about you," Rufus says, leaning down to speak into my ear. This is the closest that he's ever come to using the word "love" in relation to me or anyone, so far as I know, and it almost sobers me up.

" You know how to stay the hell out of things," he says, bringing me back down to earth, running the tip of his tongue very carefully, almost dry, along the edge of my ear, making me shudder again.

* * *

After being named Vice President of Shinra, Rufus became very obsessive about brushing his teeth. It was strange, because he was always eating sticky, chewy junk food – lots of things with caramel centers. But he was so vain about his teeth that he would rush off to brush them immediately after eating, and sometimes he would just do it spontaneously, at random intervals, all day long. He once flossed with abandon during a meeting about the dismantling of the space program, though I think that was mostly just to tick his father off.

He used brushing as an excuse to weasel out of my grip after we'd screwed around in his penthouse. It bothered me, not because I wanted him to drape himself all over me—I'd never had that, didn't really want it and couldn't miss it. But lying in bed after sex had once been the time when he talked to me. After he came back from Junon, it was always his precious teeth that had him catapulting out toward the bathroom, following the briefest of pauses after he came, when he drooled lazily on his pillow, maybe reached over to help me finish if he was feeling especially charitable or delirious. And once he was in there, electric toothbrush whirring against his perfectly white grimace of a grin, I knew he wouldn't return. He'd either dress fully and fly out of the room, mumbling something about a dinner he had to attend, or would sit naked at his desk by the window, pouring over papers while I pretended to sleep, watching him from the bed.

I missed having someone to talk to. Rude was my best friend, but his conversations rarely strayed from the subjects of women and guns, neither of which particularly interested me. Elena, who had by then been promoted to a receptionist position on the 14th floor, was good for chitchat but talked too much about her job and how she couldn't wait to move up the Shinra Tower, approaching career holy land. Rufus had been the first person I'd ever really liked talking to, because he lived in a different world, because he could tell me things I didn't know. And because conversations with Rufus were like kickboxing matches—if you let your defenses down, or made a stupid remark, he'd call you on it, give you a verbal kick to the jaw, a superior grin on his face. The longer I knew Rufus, the clearer it became that I was a glutton for punishment, and part of me missed his talent for ripping me to shreds, because I always assumed it meant he cared, in some perverse Shinra way. After he returned from Junon he resigned to only muttering to his papers about his father's incompetence.

More than good conversation, I wanted to know what was going on with the Shinra upper management. In the past year I'd learned a few things through rumors and gossip—that General Sephiroth had more to do with Shinra than either party was willing to admit, that there were floors high on the Tower that only the most elite employees had access to—secret labs and cells for political prisoners. I wanted to ask Rufus about all of it, but I'd learned better, by then. Showing curiosity was just like showing weakness—it would only earn you a cloying smirk, maybe a cutting remark about your cluelessness, if you were lucky.

So I didn't ask, most days, what he was working on, what he thought he was going to get out of the company, what he thought the company was going to get out of the rest of the world. And I didn't ask what I wanted to know most of all—I didn't ask about what had happened in Junon.

I did have booze to help me, though, just as I always had. When Rufus invited me up the penthouse I would immediately streak for the bar and make him a martini that was stronger than he liked. He would always make a face of disgust when he sipped it, but he drank them down anyway, standing at the tall windows, his posture getting less rigid every time I refilled his glass.

" I haven't been out of the Tower in a long time," he muttered one night, looking down at the plate.

" What are you talking about?" I asked, walking to stand beside him, pressing my forehead to the glass, tipping forward. It felt like I might fall.

" You left in a helicopter this morning," I reminded him. " Not like I know where the fuck you went. Since you didn't tell me." I shut my eyes and put my arms out, balancing, imagining that I could feel the wind against my face. President Shinra would be murdered by Sephiroth in two weeks and everything would get blasted apart, but I felt like I was already on my way down.

" You didn't ask," he muttered, watching me. " What in the hell are you doing?"

" So where did you go this morning?" I asked, eyes still closed.

" You're drunk," he scoffed. " For a change."

" Exactly," I said, laughing. This was the way it had come to be when Rufus and I were together. We were always having two simultaneous conversations: the one he was willing to have and the one he wanted to avoid.

" I mean I haven't been in the _city_ in awhile," he said, gesturing with his martini glass, not exactly sober himself. " Midgar. You know what I mean."

I did. I knew what he was thinking of, our old romps through the bad neighborhoods. I faltered, thinking of it, had to drop my arms and steady myself against the window, palms to the glass.

" So let's go," I said, standing and turning to him, searching him for that kid I had dragged into my father's house. His shoulders were starting to slouch like they used to, but his eyes were different. Still, it was another reason that Rufus was the only person who I could really talk to. He had been there, in my childhood bedroom, had seen everything, knew _everything_. He knew everything, and he still couldn't bring himself to tell me where he'd gone in a goddamn helicopter.

" You know, my father died," I said. " Did I tell you that?"

He was quiet for a moment, then went to the bar and poured himself another drink, made it even stronger than I had.

" I'm starting to think that my mother didn't," he said tightly. He held the glass to his lips but couldn't seem to make himself drink. His hand was shaking.

" What do you mean?" I asked, thinking of my own mother, the way she had only vanished. But Rufus' had been buried in the slums – we had stood over her grave together.

" Nothing," he said, throwing back the drink. " Forget I said it."

I didn't press it then, but I wouldn't forget it, either. In the weeks leading up to his own father's death Rufus grew increasingly distant, until he'd almost disappeared entirely into his papers. Once unflappable, he became shaky and anxious, though he was careful not to let this show in public. I saw it, though, when he fled to the penthouse to be alone, to be alone with me, because being alone with me _was _being alone. Though he kept himself mostly closed to me, or tried to, I still knew him better than anyone else. I saw him chugging coffee and whispering into legal documents he'd blackmailed the mayor into giving him, only to comb his hair, straighten his tie and step out of the place with composure, walking the halls of the Tower as if nothing had changed.

Though I knew nothing about what was going on with the company, outside of the missions I was handed as a well-dressed thug, I knew Rufus. I saw him eat a box of taffy for breakfast and drink three sodas for lunch before brushing his perfect teeth white again and going out to face his father and the others at a gala dinner.

I was happy to be the only one who knew the real Rufus. His reputation meant everything to him, and I was glad I had a part in protecting it. But it was hard not to be able to talk to anyone about what was happening. Rufus was the only person I had real conversations with, though we weren't exactly _talking_ anymore. We talked around each other, but we still knew each other better than anyone else alive or dead.

When I saw Rufus slipping into an elevator with Hojo, the man he had railed against for years and accused of driving his father out of his mind, I knew it was over. Rufus had lost it, and I had no one to tell but Rufus. He looked out at me as the doors closed around the elevator that would take them up to the floors where I wasn't allowed, and when I met his eyes I saw both of them staring back at me: the Vice President and the kid who ate candy for breakfast.

Only one of them looked sorry.

* * *

I wake up in Rufus' bed, in what used to be the Don's tacky bedroom. Blinking at the dark ceiling, I suck in my breath, smelling bleach. Rufus stripped the place bare and brought in a new bed and new furniture, or as new as he could manage with the city's limited resources. He also had Palmer scrub the room clean until it was sterile enough to perform surgery in, but it still feels tainted, the air inside maliciously stale.

Rufus is sitting on the edge of the bed, frowning to himself. For a few dizzy seconds I'm afraid I did something with him while drunk, but we're both dressed, and I realize I just passed out here after dinner, remember following him up hoping for something from him before I left. I'm not sure what it was, or is; it's not exactly sex, or a renewal of confidence, but some kind of impossible compromise between the two. Instead I fell asleep and he sat apart from me with his self-involved fretting: nothing less than what I've come to expect from the two of us.

Noticing that I'm awake, Rufus crawls across the giant bed to lean over me, and though I'd been in the process of getting up to go, I let my head fall back down, stare up at him.

" Have you forgiven me yet?" he asks, lips closing over mine. He's asking me if I'll let him fuck me. I'm surprised that he suddenly feels he needs my permission. I want him to do it without asking so that I can pretend that I'm not consciously betraying Cloud. I'd rather go back to the dorms and have Cloud do it instead, but he seems to always want it the other way around. I know if I just pissed him off enough the situation would flip, but he still kind of scares the shit out of me when he's mad, and I don't know if it would be worth losing the ability to walk for a week.

" I have to go," I tell Rufus. His lips are hot and wet, between my jaw and my neck, chasing down my heartbeat. He's always done that, lingered where he could feel my pulse pumping against his mouth.

" So go," he mutters, lifting his face to meet my eyes. I pull him down to me and kiss him without stopping to breathe, hold him against me until my lungs burn. When I let him go he pretends to be disaffected, badly, chewing on his grin. I huff to get my breath back, not bothering to act cool, maybe because I'm still drunk, and I've got a tent in my pants, anyway.

" Fuck, Rufus," I groan, sitting up and rubbing at my eyes.

" Why do you keep going back there?" he asks, sitting up on his elbow and watching me slide off the bed. " To punish me? Or have you met someone else?"

He laughs uproariously at the thought.

" Hey, remember when you never told me a goddamn thing about anything you did, or why?" I snap sarcastically. " Oh wait, you still do that. And you're asking me to explain myself? _Please_."

" _Please_," Rufus mutters, mimicking me. " Fair enough. If you tell me why you're leaving I'll tell you something you want to know."

" I don't want to know anything about you Ruf," I say, shaking my head. " Not anymore."

I realize it's true after I've said it, and turn for the door. I can _feel _his chest collapsing under my words as I go. I hate that I can feel things like that, that we're connected somehow. Or maybe I can't feel anything—maybe I'm just projecting. The crush is in my chest, too, splintering through me like brittle cold. And I thought he was dead before, felt sure of it. Maybe I only think I know Rufus. He probably doesn't give a damn about me, about what I want, even about where I go, really. He just wants a good fuck so he can get some sleep.

When I get outside I find the girls huddled in a makeshift tent to the right of the front doors. The wind is blowing hard against it, and two of them are standing outside, their feet bracing the pathetic thing as it shakes.

" Thought you was one of them hoods!" one shouts to me as I make my way past.

" Huh?"

" Some guys came around earlier," the other girl who is standing guard explains. " Bothered us."

" Got any weapons we could have?" the first girl asks. She's the loud one, and she's wearing a plastic poncho now, its hood flapping across her eyes.

" Hell no," I say with a scoff, thinking of how they'd jump me and strip me bare before I could blink if they had so much as a pointy stick to threaten with. I do feel sorry for them as I walk away, though. I think of all the empty space inside the mansion, the bunks that line the walls downstairs, where the guys who used to rough them up slept while they were in Corneo's employ. Turning back for a moment, I see the quieter girl watching me, and I whirl around and hurry ahead into the darkness, away from the light of their oil drum fire, which shines through the tent, illuminating the vulnerable shadows moving inside.

My walk back to the dorms is slow, with the wind beating against me. I have to keep my eyes on ground, and when I finally get into the lobby I shake enough dust from my hair to form a sizable circle around me on the linoleum floor. It's late and the building is quiet, but when I look up I see Elena sitting in a chair in the common area.

" Hey Reno," she says, weakly raising a hand.

" What's the matter?" I ask, going to her. " Where's Tseng? Did he get back alright?"

" He's fine," she says with a shrug. " He's upstairs."

" What are you doing?" I ask, sitting on the arm of the chair she's slouched in.

" Nothing." She looks at her hands. " You've been with Rufus?"

" Yeah."

" Does he know about Cloud?" she asks after a pause.

" No. But I did tell him—Cloud—about Rufus."

" And he's okay with you going over there?" she asks.

" I don't know, I guess," I say, standing and pacing, irritated. " It's not his decision to make, Elena."

" You know what I mean," she says darkly.

" No, I don't," I lie. " Why should Cloud give a shit?"

" Fine," she mutters, rolling her eyes.

" Oh yeah, I'm the immature one," I sneer. " You're sitting down here in the dark, what? Hiding from Tseng?"

" I'm not hiding," she says, glaring at me.

" Well, you're sure in some kind of funk."

" What is Rufus doing, anyway?" she asks, standing.

" Tseng hasn't told you?" I say smartly, baiting her. Her face sinks.

" Nobody tells me anything," she says, standing. " I thought you all considered me an equal now, but I guess not."

" Elena that's not—"

" Goodnight, Reno," she says, heading for the front doors.

" Where the hell are you going?" I ask.

" For a walk."

" You can't!" I say, walking to her. " It's night. It's not safe out there. And anyway—the wind."

" I like the wind," she says with a shrug. " And I'll be alright." She pulls a gun from the pocket of the oversized jacket she's wearing. It looks oddly familiar.

" Cloud gave it to me," she says, pushing the door open. The wind is howling away outside, and her hair flies up around her face as she braces herself against it. I watch her go until her bright figure disappears into the darkness, and wonder if she's even ever shot anyone before.

I climb the stairs, sober and tired, and when I get to our apartment it's dark, and seems empty. The wind is rattling the windows, and I go to the one over the kitchen sink to peer out at the sky, obscured by the dust and dirt blowing through the city, no stars visible. When I head into the bedroom I expect to find Cloud asleep, but he's sitting at the window, in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him, fighting to stay awake.

" What are you giving Elena a gun for?" I ask, standing in the doorway. He blinks and stretches, sits forward and squints over at me.

" Tseng wouldn't give her one," he says, his voice scratchy with exhaustion. I want to crawl into his lap, but I only walk to the bed and sit down, facing him.

" Why the hell not?" I ask, confused. " What did she want one for, anyway?"

" She wouldn't say," he tells me. " That's why he wouldn't give her one," he adds, standing. He comes to the bed and falls forward onto his stomach, sighing into the mussed covers. I reach over and put a hand on the small of his back. His skin is warm from a long night spent sitting in that chair.

" Your hand is freezing," he mumbles, flinching.

" Sorry." I jam a thumb against the knotted muscles there, pressing into them in rough circles. He groans but doesn't complain.

" How's Rufus?" he asks.

" Who the fuck knows," I mutter. I think of him in that obsessively cleaned room that still feels filthy, sitting up with what I told him.

" Are you, uh . . .?" he asks, or doesn't ask, his skin growing hotter under my hand. I climb onto him and lean against his back, pull myself up until my chin is resting on his shoulder.

" No."

" You smell different," he whispers, embarrassed. His eyes are shut.

" What do you care?" I ask, feeling guilty for the kiss, though I would do it again, though I will, tomorrow.

" I don't care," he breathes, rolling over, pulling my face down to his. " I don't care." When he kisses me I wonder if he can taste Rufus there.

" Fuck me," I beg, my voice nearly cracking.

" I'm too tired," he says, but he's still undoing my pants. I know what he wants. I want to ask him why, but I know he won't tell me, and more than anything I just want to come. My dick feels heavy and tight—I'm hard just from the scrape of his body against mine, and I know I won't last long.

All it takes is my name issuing from his throat like a broken plea, five times, maybe less, each one louder than the last, making me jerk into him a little harder. When I finish I feel weightless and ruined, and I fall forward to kiss his neck with sloppy, groping lips.

I at least want him in my mouth, but he finishes himself off before I can even get my arms steady enough to push myself down there. He comes with a self-contained sigh and his eyes watch the ceiling with sleepy resignation. They're glowing even in the small light from the window, and I should find it creepy, really.

" What do I smell like, anyway?" I mutter as I pull the blankets up around us. He rolls onto his side and shuts his eyes.

" Something antiseptic," he says. " And ham."

" That's just from the place where they're holed up," I assure him, throwing an arm around him so he can settle in against me. I haven't told him where Rufus and the others are hiding. He's done me the favor of not asking. He's done me a lot of favors lately. Or what he thinks are favors.

" What did I smell like before?" I ask, pulling him in tighter.

" I don't know," he mutters. " Like you."

* * *

Rude and Elena took care of me when I was injured during the Sector Seven job that brought the plate down onto the neighborhood below. Elena was promoted to the Turks, to fill in for me while I was out of commission. Cloud had cut a jagged stripe down my side before I coolly climbed into that helicopter, leaving them to die and collapsing as soon as I was out of sight.

" I'm gonna kill that little fucker," I grumbled when Rude told me that Cloud and his friends had been spotted in Wall Market by Corneo. The old pervert was sure that he had killed them, but I knew if they could escape the Turks and an exploding pillar that he wouldn't have been able to finish the job, confident as he was.

" At least we got the girl," Rude said, sitting on the end of my bed. I was staying in the medical ward on the 53rd floor, weak from loss of blood and suffering with a few cracked ribs that I was actually grateful for, as they translated to painkillers aplenty.

" Yeah," I muttered, thinking of Aeris. I knew I was alive because of her, though I didn't want to believe it. In the chopper on the way back to the Tower, Rude had kept his clumsy hands along my side, trying to keep me from bleeding to death. Aeris had lunged for me and he had pushed her away, thinking she was retaliating for her friends' deaths in the explosion.

" Rude, let her," Tseng had said, watching the three of us warily from the back of the copter. " It's okay."

The girl had come forward, her eyes on mine, and had replaced Rude's hands over the wound. I could feel something—not quite relief, but a steadying, reassuring pressure in my chest, before I passed out.

" What do they want with her, anyway?" Elena asked, shifting in her seat beside my bed. Rude and I looked at each other. We had our doubts about Elena making it as a Turk, as happy as we were that our friend had finally gotten what she wanted, even if it came at the expense of my own near-death. We could tell that she wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of kidnapping an innocent girl, and didn't quite have the heart to tell her that this was not so out of the ordinary for a Turk mission.

" I think Hojo wants to—I don't know, like, study her cells or something," I stuttered, and Rude nodded.

" He won't kill her, will he?" Elena asked.

" It's none of our business anymore," I said quickly, before Rude could lie. " We don't get to know what Hojo does, exactly." I gave her a look that told her she had to be okay with this, or okay with going back to taking phone calls and making coffee on the 14th floor.

" I'm sure whatever he's doing is really important research," she said breathily. " It will probably save a lot of lives."

I smiled at her, thought of standing on that pillar before we armed the bomb. I had looked down and told myself that the people down there had nothing to live for, anyway. That we were doing them a favor. I could hear Rufus saying it in my head. You had to start thinking like a Shinra to bear the weight of taking their money.

It took three days for Rufus to show up to check on me. I was reading a porn magazine from the stack that Rude had brought me when I looked up to find him standing across the room, in the doorway of the otherwise empty infirmary.

" Hey, maybe I should sue you," I called across the hollow space between us. " I was injured on the job, after all."

" You know I'll give you whatever you want," he said tightly, not moving.

I laughed into the pages of the magazine, then realized he was being serious.

" Oh, anything I want?"

" Reno."

" Okay, I want you to leave," I said, squeezing the pages into my hands until I could hear them tearing at the margins. " I want you to leave Shinra and all of this behind, tonight. I'll go with you. Remember? Remember, Rufus, _I'll go with you_."

" I can't give you that," he said quietly, walking closer, but stopping before he reached the bed. " Ask me for something I can give you."

Taking a choppy breath, I looked down at the crumpled magazine, at its shining airbrushed images, models with open mouths.

" How about a fucking beer?" I muttered, defeated.

" I didn't realize my father assigned you to that mission," he said, not listening even to the simplest of my requests. " I think he did it to get to me. He might know."

" It was a Turk mission," I said. " I'm a Turk, Rufus. It's not a fucking conspiracy against you."

He pursed his lips, looked me over, kept his distance. I could see by his eyes that he hadn't been sleeping. He might not have even looked up from his "research" to find out that I'd been injured until just now. I told myself that was what had happened, that he hadn't known for days and waited to come see me.

" You think I'm crazy," he said quietly, looking back over his shoulder. " I'm the only one who knows what the hell is really going on, Reno."

" Here we go," I mumbled, pretending to be disinterested. I closed the magazine, smoothed down the wrinkled cover.

" The woman—that woman from the slums who spent his money and killed herself? The trophy wife? That wasn't my mother," he whispered, leaning in close to me now. I looked up at him, saw the cracks in his sanity widening. It was all over his face. Maybe his father was trying to destroy him. Since he'd given him the Vice Presidency, something was certainly doing the job. I was afraid that it was Rufus himself.

" How do you know?" I asked.

" I've broken into some of his files, and I've been talking with Hojo." He glanced over his shoulder.

" Why would they--"

" Scarlet and I were part of an experiment that didn't work," he whispered. " Just like the first one, to create an invincible Shinra heir."

" Rufus --"

" Now I'm trying to figure out what happened to my father's first child," he said, on his knees now, his lips close to my ear as his eyes wandered the room with wild suspicion. " I think they killed him. My brother."

I wanted to believe him, if simply to stop myself from coming to the conclusion that Rufus had gone to a place he wasn't coming back from. I stared at him, saw him watching me, waiting for me to validate what he was saying somehow.

" Why are you telling me all of this now?" I asked, reaching for him, squeezing his shoulder, wanting to help him, knowing I couldn't.

" You almost died," he said, his eyes going dark.

" No shit. I still don't--"

" You're all I have," he said slowly, unblinking. " I think you're a real person," he added with a laugh, looking away. I broke into a smile, remembering that night, and shocked that he could, even in the midst of his breakdown.

" I'm telling you everything from now on," he said, leaning forward to kiss me, his cold hand on my cheek for just a moment before he stood to go.

He wasn't lying. His father would die that night, Cloud and the others would escape, and he would tell me everything. I could never know if he was telling me the truth, or what he only thought was the truth, but I wanted to believe that he was he right about all of it, because I didn't know how to save him if he wasn't.

* * *

Cloud wakes me up early the next morning with his usual writhing. Something feels strange, and I can hear a buzzing kind of sound that I eventually recognize as silence—the winds stopped overnight, as usual. Their morning hiatus has become the exception rather than that rule, and the stillness is a little unnerving.

" I'm hungry," Cloud complains, rolling onto his stomach.

" What do you want me to do about it?" I ask.

" Elena has graham crackers," he says.

" Fine," I groan, rolling out of bed, stumbling around until I find a pair of clean underwear and my rumpled pants. " I better go make sure she's alive, anyway."

" Why wouldn't she be alive?" he asks, sitting up in bed as I go for the door.

" Because some punk gave her a loaded weapon, and now she thinks she's a real badass and goes wandering around by herself at night."

" I didn't want the gun, okay!" he says, frowning.

" Well, you took it," I remind him, thinking of Rufus the night he gave it to me, telling me he didn't want to see me with anymore bruises. At the time I had assumed it was all part of some plot or another, but maybe he was just being nice.

" It's probably not a good idea for me to have a gun right now," he says, punctuating his idiocy with a gigantic yawn.

" Uh. Is that a _threat_?"

" Not exactly," he says.

I stomp out of the room, shaking my head and choosing not to try and figure out what that could possibly mean, though I have a few bleary guesses. It's too damn early for this shit.

After making my way slowly upstairs, I knock on the door to Elena and Tseng's apartment, and when no one answers for a few minutes I feel a tick of anxiety in the bottom of my throat. I'm telling myself that he would have come and gotten me if anything happened to her, if she was missing, when she finally pulls the door open.

" God, Reno," she moans, rubbing her eyes. " What is it?" She's wearing a robe, her hair is a mess and her eyes are two angry, half-asleep slits.

" Aren't you going to work?" I ask, seeing sunlight streaming through the windows in the apartment behind her. Across the hall, even Yuffie is scurrying out of her room, half a piece of red licorice sticking out of her mouth.

" Gawd, Elena, you look like crap!" she calls before disappearing down the stairway.

" I hate that kid," Elena mutters when she's gone, leaning in the doorway.

" Did you get trashed last night or what?" I ask, pushing my way around her until I'm inside. She sighs and shuts the door.

" No, I just stayed up late," she tells me, folding her arms over her chest and coming to sit at the kitchen table. " I was thinking."

" By thinking do you mean blowing people away?" I ask, picking up her jacket, which is lying across the table. I pat the pockets but the gun isn't there. " Cause when you left last night you sure looked like you had a mind for fighting some crime! Or committing some."

" I was upset," she mutters, head in her hands.

" So where'd you bury the gun?" I ask brightly, my eyes searching the kitchen for any sign of it. " Or the body, for that matter?"

" Reno, shut up," she groans. " The gun is in a flour canister under the sink, if you must know."

" Hiding it from a certain someone?" I ask, sitting down across from her.

" Tseng and I aren't really seeing eye to eye right now," she says sharply.

" He's with Rufus?" I ask, glancing around.

" Of course he is," she says, glowering. " He was called away in the middle of the night, wouldn't tell me why. You know, I don't care what Rufus is doing. I trust he and Tseng. I just don't understand why they don't trust me."

" That's it," I say, smacking the table with both my hands, making her jump. " We're going over there right now."

" What?"

" Get dressed, sister," I tell her, pointing to her bedroom. " This has gone on long enough. We're going to find out what the hell's going on, you and me."

" Oh, Reno, really?" she asks, excited for a moment, standing, and then wilting a little. " Won't Tseng be upset?" she asks.

" He brought me there without the others' permission," I say with a shrug. " He knew it was the right thing to do. He won't be angry. Trust me. He just—doesn't want you to get hurt."

" You're right," she says, smiling. " I just have to show him I'm on his side."

I watch her go for her bedroom, hear her rifling through drawers. I'm not even close to being sure that this is the right thing to do, but I can't stand to see Elena fall apart just because of Rufus and Tseng and their varying delusions. Maybe it's time to uncover all of the hidden agendas. I think of telling Rufus about Cloud. Then I think of the planet being engulfed in a fireball fueled by convenient lies, and that seems much more preferable.

Elena and I make for Wall Market, but not before stopping by the worksite to pick up Rude. He sneaks away with us happily, and my spirits are lifted by tromping through the streets with the two of them, until Rude tells me that he might have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag.

" Scarlet may know about Rufus," he says with an apologetic wince.

" Rude!" I reach over to smack him, then stop myself. " Aw, fuck it. She's got a right to know. From now on, you know what? The Turks are free agents. If we want to do Rufus's dirty work, we will. If we don't, we won't!"

Elena and Rude look at me like I've just burst into flames.

" Shit, who am I kidding," I mutter. " Just don't mention anything about it to Rufus, got it?"

" Got it!" Rude chirps.

Before we reach the back of Wall Market, we hear the sounds of some kind of scuffle. There are two quick shrieks, and I think of the girls who live outside and bolt ahead, Rude and Elena following me with confused shouts. When I turn the corner around the old weapons shop I've already got my taser at the ready, and I'm rearing back to jam into the neck of a guy who's struggling with a blonde girl he's pinned to the ground when I hear a gun shot behind me.

Everyone in the melee freezes, and I survey the damage. There are five guys, two of them dragging off girls who appear to be unconscious, one crouched on the ground with a head injury, one concentrating on this blonde in front of me and another, the biggest of them, batting away the rest of the girls, who are clawing at him unsuccessfully. When I turn to find out who fired the shots I see Elena holding the gun Cloud gave her, pointing it toward the crowd.

" Reno," she says sharply, as if asking for further instruction. I turn back to the mob scene just in time to get a fist to the face from the blonde, who got free from the man trying to attack her when Elena fired into the air.

" No, Tatiya, he's one of the good ones!" another girl screams as I stagger around, and when I've got my balance I see the guy closest to me pull out a gun and fire at Elena, who gasps and falters when the bullet clips her shoulder.

Suddenly Rude and three of the attackers are pulling out guns, and I grab the blonde who decked me and duck as Rude, one gun in each hand, starts taking people out.

" Only the men, Rude!" I scream over the gunfire, crawling across the ground toward Elena, who is holding her shoulder and defending us with her gun, held up in the other shaky arm.

" No shit, Reno!" he screams. I'm almost afraid to see what's going on behind me, but I can hear the girls' frightened yells and the men grunting in pain and firing, though the firing eventually tapers off. I snatch the gun from Elena's trembling hand and turn to help Rude finish them off, but by the time I've got a bead on the last guy standing I see the Rude's already hit him in the lower stomach, and he falls onto the lifeless girl he had been carrying off.

" True to form," someone bellows out over the scene, and I look up to see a furious Heidegger and a stunned Tseng standing on the balcony that overlooks the courtyard. " You morons bring disaster wherever you go," Heidegger finishes, grimacing down at the dead men and the remaining girls, who are shoving the man who went down last off of their fallen friend.

" Are you okay?" I ask Elena, ignoring him. She nods, holding her arm, her face pale but her breathing steady. Rude kneels down beside her and gingerly peeks under her bloody hand.

" It's not deep," he says.

" You?" I ask, looking at the blonde girl—Tatiya, I guess—who is now clinging to my side.

" Sorry I punched you," she whispers, bursting into tears.

" Let's get them all inside before these assholes' friends show up to see how the panty raid went," I say, helping Tatiya to stand while Rude lifts Elena into his arms.

" I can walk, Rude," Elena protests, though she lets him carry her toward the mansion.

" C'mon," I call to the remaining three girls. The loud girl is struggling to drag the one who is still unconscious—one of the smaller ones, with long hair that has been badly dyed pink—along with the rest of the group.

Tseng runs out from the side of the mansion before we can reach the side door, bolting past the other injured girls to reach for Elena.

" Give her to me," he demands, and Rude drops her into his arms.

" It's okay," Elena says, her voice quaking. " I can walk." But she crumbles against him, pressing her face to his neck.

" Reno, what are you doing?" Tseng asks with barely controlled fury as he leads us inside the dark passageway.

" You don't get to ask me what I'm doing," I grumble, disoriented. We come into the main lobby and I survey the damage. Including Tatiya, there are five girls here who didn't or couldn't run off when the shots were fired. One is the loud girl with the short, dark hair, the other is the quietest and thinnest of the group, and then there's the unconscious, pink-haired girl and a girl with dark curls who looks like she's about to pass out again, nursing a sizeable bump on her forehead.

I hear footsteps on the stairs above us and look up to see Heidegger and Rufus staring down at us. Tseng is cradling Elena on the floor, carefully tending to her arm.

" Get the doctors!" he screams up at Rufus, whose expression is equally bemused and puzzled, and Heidegger, who is looking between Rude and I with disgust.

" The doctors have much more important things to--" he barks, but Tseng cuts him off.

" The doctors, Rufus!" he shouts, and Rufus smiles a little.

" How about that timing," he muses quietly before turning to Heidegger. " Yes, do get them," he says, and Heidegger's face goes from red to purple. " I imagine they haven't even gotten settled yet, but what did I hire them for if not to—well—fix people?"

" Sir, these are the whores who—"

" Elena's arm needs bandaging," Tseng snarls at Heidegger. " You heard what Rufus said, now do it."

" Since when am I taking orders from you?" Heidegger barks, still not budging.

" Please, Quara's hurt," whimpers the thin girl, the pink-haired girl's head lolling in her lap.

" Since now," Rufus says, his eyes unfocused. " Since now, Heidegger, now you're taking orders from Tseng. He's been much more valuable to me since the company's fall." His eyes flick over me as he says this.

" Bringing these street urchins in here, comprising our security, all of our plans--!"

" We were going to have to reach out to the community for support eventually," Rufus says with a little shrug. " This is a nice start, actually. Today, we're heroes."

" You're Rufus Shinra," the loud girl says, staring up at him.

" Well spotted," Rufus mutters. " Now go, Heidegger, before I have to promote Palmer over you as well."

That finally sends the big man lumbering away, and I look to Tseng, who doesn't seem to notice that he has just officially become Rufus' second in command. Rufus himself seems to be taking all of this with an eerie stride, and when I glance back up at him I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he surveys the injured girls.

Heidegger thunders back in, stopping in the doorway and pointing. From behind him, two people I've never seen before rush inside. One is a tall man with short, dark hair, and the other is a small woman with dull red hair and startling cheekbones.

" What's going on, Rufus?" she asks, frowning down at the scene below. The man rushes around her, a medical bag in his hand.

" This is my new housekeeping staff," he says, smiling to himself. " See that they don't die, won't you, Gordon?"

" I don't understand," she mumbles, looking over the girls with distaste as her partner goes to the girl with curly hair.

" What happened?" he asks, kneeling in front of her.

" They hit me," she croaks out, pointing to her forehead, which he's already leaning up to examine.

" Do you have a concussion?" he asks, riffling blindly through his bag. " What's your name?"

" That's Marty," the loud girl shouts before she can answer. " Quit messin' around with her, she's fine – Quara's unconscious!" She points impatiently at the pink-haired girl, who the thin girl is weeping over.

" Go on," Rufus says to Gordon as the other doctor rushes over to Quara. " See to her," he says, pointing to Elena. Gordon sighs and descends the stairs, coming to where Rude, Tseng and I have squatted around Elena, who is wincing, but sitting up tall.

" I'm okay," Elena says, as Gordon pulls Tseng's hand away from her cut. " He missed me, mostly. It just stings."

" Why are your people getting in gun fights at this stage?" Gordon calls up to Rufus, ignoring Elena as she dresses her wound.

" I'd like to know that myself," Heidegger barks, still haunting the doorway, Palmer now peeking around his meaty shoulders.

" They were defending our new staff," Rufus says with a disinterested shrug. " I told you I need more help, more scouts and people to care for the property. Plus, these girls probably have contacts all over the city."

Heidegger opens his mouth, seemingly to doubt this assumption, but then thinks better of it and shuts it.

" They are not your personal sex slaves," Rufus adds with a smirk, casting a meaningful look at Palmer. " Though if they want to make some extra money, that's their business."

" Fuckin' Shinras!" the loud girl shouts, glaring up at him. " My friend's dying over here, dickhead."

" No, she's not," the male doctor says, and the girl comes coughing back to life as he runs a vial of smelling salts under her nose. " I don't even see any visible injuries on her. I think she may have just fainted."

Quara sits up, takes a look around the room, and starts screaming at the top of her lungs as if to confirm this.

" Hey, hey!" the thin girl says, grabbing Quara's arms and steadying her while the doctor reels backward, returning to Marty. " It's okay."

" Will she be alright?" Tseng asks Gordon as she finishes taping Elena's bandages on. She gives him a look.

" Of course she will," she says curtly, standing. " Rufus, are we done here?" she calls across the room. " I have a lot of questions for you, and to be honest, this seems more than a little absurd."

" Fine, leave Dr. Cooper to finish with my staff," Rufus says, sliding his hands into his pockets. " Rude, see that they get a hot meal, and you might want to keep what I said about sex slaves in mind as well. Gordon, you come with me. And you, too," he says, pointing at the loud girl. " What's your name?"

" Fuck you, that's my name!" she shouts.

" Her name is Ana," the thin girl says with a belabored sigh, still patting the frantic Quara's arm. " Haven't we done enough fighting today?" she asks Ana in a pointed whisper.

" You want me to take orders from a Shinra, Libby?" she snarls. " Dad'll be spinning his in grave."

" Would you please shut up and come with me before I have you taken out back and executed?" Rufus says sweetly, still smiling, though he's obviously losing his patience. The girl blanches, turns back to her sister, and then starts for the stairs. Gordon, who is already standing beside him, groans.

" This is a circus," she says, watching her partner bandage Marty's head.

" Welcome to Shinra," Rufus mutters, looking at me now. " Reno, you too."

" Me too what?" I ask, standing.

" Come with us." Rufus says, not waiting for me to protest or agree. He turns and heads for a room to the right of the landing, disappearing behind a heavy red curtain. Gordon follows him in, and Ana lingers, looks back at me as I jog up the stairs.

" You kind of saved us," she says quietly.

" Yeah, kind of," I mumble, pulling back the curtain and shoving her in ahead of me. Inside, Rufus still has a grin on his face that can't mean anything good, and Gordon is sitting on the arm of a tacky chair Corneo had made up to look like a throne, watching Ana and I like we're a couple of giant cockroaches who have just crawled into the room.

" It's funny that the employees who need the most from me are the ones who give me the most trouble," Rufus says after a moment of awkward silence.

" Since when am I--" Ana starts to protest.

" You want to go try your luck with your gentleman friends outside?" Rufus asks her evenly. " Those from this morning might be dead, but I assure you there are thousands more like them still hanging around the city."

She stands still, looks at the ground.

" What I'm offering you and your friends is menial work and three meals a day," he explains. " You can take it, or leave it for the other business opportunity still available in Midgar." He pauses for a second, looks at the ceiling. I know what he's thinking, that leaving isn't really an option, unless they want to leave in a burlap bag and get dumped into the Wall Market trash heap with the rest of the missing people no one cares to look for anymore. It's still a secret that Rufus is alive, and Ana's reaction to this confirms that it isn't yet time for him to reemerge.

" Thank you," she says simply, not looking up. I recognize the defeat on her face, because it's relief, too. It's what all of us felt when we went to Shinra to save us after they had destroyed us.

" Splendid," he says with a little clap of his hands. " Now run off and see about your friends. You have the day off! I assure you, my terrible reputation as an employer is founded only on the jealousy of competitors." His smile is like a slap in the face, but she ducks it by not meeting his eyes before she slinks out of the room.

" Now, Gordon," he says, turning to the woman. She looks furious, with arms crossed tightly over her chest. I can't figure out how old she is—she looks young, but her dull green eyes have an world-weary tightness around the corners.

" I don't appreciate your disrespect in front of my other employees," he says, his condescending expression loosening. " Take it from Reno, here—if you're going to call me a useless asshole you can do it to my face, and in private."

" I didn't--"

" I know you think you were doing some important things in Mideel," he says, stepping closer to her. " In the opinion of those who once funded your research, you were not. And what other opinions matter, really? I've hired you to do as I ask. And that means whatever I ask. If I ask you to put a band-aid on Palmer's ass, you'll do it."

" You told me I would be doing research," she says, one eye twitching.

" You will be," he says, walking away from her, smiling at in my direction but looking through me. " For the most part. And if you have a problem with any of this, you should have spoken up sooner. You now know where our base is located, and something of our goals here at Neo Shinra. If I witness any further insurrection on your part, I'll simply dispose of you. Cooper knows all of your research, anyway."

" So that's why you wanted me to bring along a protégé," she responds after a short pause, not sounding particularly offended or surprised.

" My father taught me a few useful lessons," Rufus said, smiling to himself. " Particularly where people who think they're smarter than their financiers are concerned. You may be dismissed to think about what I've said."

" How old are you, kid?" she asks, and I laugh a little, then swallow it when Rufus shoots me a look.

" At least two hundred and twenty by now," he answers with a shrug.

" I believe it," she says with a disgusted look, shaking her head. " You're demon spawn, Shinra, I knew that when I took this job. But don't worry about me. You're my last chance."

" Precisely my point," he says as she turns to go. He looks at me, raises an eyebrow.

" It's the ones who have no where else to go who give me the most trouble," he says, walking to me. " Why is that, Reno?"

" Maybe because no one has anywhere else to go," I tell him. " Maybe because they never did, thanks to your family."

" Ah, that."

" What the fuck do you want from me?" I ask, shaking my head.

" I need you to tell me something," he says.

I wait, throw out my hands. He seems to falter, to consider if he should ask. He steps back, smoothes his hair.

" You're a strange person," he says, his back to me now.

" Wow, Rufus. Coming from you, that really means a lot."

" You brought those girls in here today—I think you always wanted to bring them here."

" I didn't--"

" It strikes me as odd," he says. " You know that people from the slums generally aren't worth a damn. You grew up with them."

" I _am_ one of them," I remind him sharply.

" Yes, well," he shakes his hand through the air to push the topic away. " I think you're in a position to get a bit of information for me, whereas the others—are not."

" The others?"

" Elena and Rude. And certainly not Tseng."

" What the fuck are you talking about?"

" I need you to get the members of Avalanche to tell you the exact location of Sephiroth's murder."

" His _murder_?"

" I know what you're thinking!" Rufus says brightly. " Which one? My brother has – well. We all know what his life was like, thanks to our respective fathers. But the murder I'm referring to is his most recent one. The last one. The one that happened while I was – away."

" Rufus, why--"

" Just do it for me, won't you?" he says, walking to me again. He puts his hands out like he might push me backward, or pull me to him, but he only thumps them once against my chest, then leaves them hanging in the air, as if he doesn't know what to do next.

" What will you do if I don't?" I ask weakly, already itching to reach for him.

He opens his mouth, but can't say it. I know what he'll do. He'll disappear entirely. I'm not his employee anymore, and he knows it. I'm something else. I'm someone who doesn't owe him anything, but hasn't walked away. I'm the only one.

" Sure, I'll find out, you crazy fuck," I mutter, pulling him into my arms. He sighs hard against my collar bone, squeezes the hem of my t-shirt into his hands.

I'll humor him, I decide, cheek resting on top of his head.

What harm could it do?

* * *

Rufus was the one who found his father dead, of course. The first one. He snuck into the office, thinking the old man was out, looking for more goddamn files to steal. President Shinra wasn't leaving the Tower too often in those days. According to Rufus, Hojo had driven him crazy by dangling the idea of the Promised Land before him as he sapped the company's resources trying and failing to create super soldiers. Rufus had always thought his father wanted to rejoin his dead mother in the Promised Land, but after he came to the conclusion that his real mother had never died at all, his father became the villain and Hojo the savior, or at least the key to understanding what had really happened. There were always things that Hojo was unwilling to reveal, however—he truly worked for no one but himself.

Feeling close to solving the puzzle of his conception, and missing some essential element that Hojo had a vested interest in keeping secret, he had stolen Heidegger's key card at a cocktail party, saving its use for the right moment. The moment he chose happened to be a short time after Sephiroth had put his sword through the old man's back, and when Rufus entered the office that night he found his key, though it did not come in the form of a dusty old slip of paper this time.

He called me when I was in the middle of dinner in the infirmary, happily eating a frozen pizza while Elena and Rude ran around the building looking for an intruder that had murdered some security guards on one of the higher floors. I didn't know about the situation yet, and I was obliviously engaged in watching the news while I ate. The reports featured more about the pillar we had blown up, about the evil Avalanche and the executions of its members, which were schedule to take place the following day. I decided to beg Rufus to finish off the little blond bastard who had sliced me up myself.

I groaned when my radio buzzed on, knowing that my vacation time was nearly up. I had mostly healed, but was milking my bed rest for everything it was worth. I answered the call, hoping that it was just Rude asking me where had left one of his guns. Rufus answered instead.

" Reno," he said. " Come up to my father's office, if you would."

" Your father's . . .? I can't--"

" Someone has opened all of the security doors in the building," he explained calmly. " You'll be able to get up here. Oh, and be careful."

" Be careful?" I asked, but he had already turned off his channel.

Thrilled at the prospect of seeing President Shinra's famed office, I was too excited to worry about breaking his orders in order to follow Rufus'. I jogged all the way to the elevators, wondering if what Rufus had said about the security doors was true. When I pressed the button for the 70th floor, the glass tube shot up the side of the building, and I whooped and cheered. Something big was going on, I knew. I tried to let myself believe, even for a moment, that all of this meant that Rufus was finally ready to run. But I couldn't. I had known too certainly and for too long that the tiny window for that flight that never happened had shut for good.

When I reached the impressive office I hurried up the stairs and saw what Rufus had discovered there: the president dead, the sword in his back, the place washed with blood.

I found Rufus on the balcony outside. He was standing on the ledge, wearing his white suit, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the city.

" There you are," he said when he heard the scrape of my footsteps on the landing. He didn't turn to face me, but flicked the cigarette off the ledge, watched it spark and spiral down toward the plate below.

" Rufus--"

" Don't worry, I'm not going to jump," he said, laughing to himself and looking at the pack of cigarettes in his hand. " I didn't know he smoked. These were in his desk drawer. Not my brand," he said with a chuckle. " Or yours, as it were. Do you want one?"

He turned then. His face was blank. They used to say that no one had ever seen Rufus bleed or cry. I suppose they still say it. I've never seen him do either.

" You went through his drawers?" I asked in disbelief. " Rufus, he's dead."

" Sephiroth killed him," he said brightly, coming down from the ledge, then turning to throw the pack off. " That's strangely satisfying," he said, watching it go. " Maybe we should start on the office furniture?"

" Rufus--"

" Sephiroth did it," he muttered, rubbing his chin. " That's his sword."

" I remember the damn sword," I said, sighing, thinking of the days when posters of the General and his famous masume were plastered all over the city, before he became an embarrassment that disappeared vaguely into Shinra history, like so many things they created and foisted upon the world they owned.

" But it doesn't matter," I said, putting my hands on his shoulders. " Sephiroth died five years ago."

" He died," Rufus said, nodding to himself, narrowing his eyes. " Right. Sephiroth died . . .," His eyes glazed over, he pulled at his bottom lip.

" Let's go get security," I said, looking over my shoulder at the fallen president. He had seemed invincible. Not so as invincible as Sephiroth, of course.

" Oh, fuck it," Rufus said, with a wave of his hand. " He's beyond the point. I've been thinking too small. I need to get out of Midgar. Get me a helicopter."

" What--"

" You know how to fly a helicopter, yes?" he asked.

" Sure, but--"

" You're my personal escort," he said, smiling, seeming to come back to earth for a moment. " You're taking me away from here."

" Really?" I asked, my pulse quickening. I knew this didn't mean what I wanted it to.

" I need some air," he said.

" What about Avalanche?" I asked, choosing not to mention that we were standing outside, at the top of the tallest building in the world, that we had all of the air we were ever going to get.

" They're beside the point," he said. " Sephiroth," he muttered, looking over my shoulder, at the sword that had killed his father. " Sephiroth . . . I used to see him here, when I was little. He was always with Hojo. Older than me. Quiet."

" Are you okay?" I asked him, taking his shoulders again, shaking him until he finally met my eyes. They looked like two kaleidoscopes spinning, all in one color but just as wild and dizzying. I kissed him on the forehead without thinking, knowing that this was more than he could hope to recover from.

" Of course I'm okay," he said with a mad smile. " Wrong brand of cigarettes, that's all. I'm okay now."

* * *

I wake up smelling bleach, and feel a panicky pressure in my chest. Lifting my face from a pillow that I've soaked with drool, I look around the dark bedroom. Rufus is asleep next to me, undressed as far as I can tell. I pull back the covers to check his bottom half, and I'm relieved to find that he's wearing underwear, though he was never one for sleeping naked, even if he'd just had sex.

Sitting up and running a hand over my face, I think back as far as I can remember, to eating ham sandwiches on the floor of the lobby with the five girls who Rufus now refers to as his housekeepers, each of them looking more terrified and grateful than the last. I remember having brandy with Rude while Elena and Tseng huddled together in the corner, whispering apologies. I roll over and feel something hard in my pocket, reach down and remember putting the gun Rufus had given me there after the fight in the courtyard. If I still have the gun in my pants, we couldn't have done anything, right?

I look at Rufus and wonder for a moment what I'm so afraid of. Goosebumps rise all over my arms and I find myself wishing he was Cloud. I'm not sure what the difference is. I'm not sure I care. All I know is that I have to get the hell out of here.

" Where are you going?" he mumbles from the bed as I'm pulling on my shirt.

" I drank too much," I tell him. " I didn't mean to fall asleep here."

" You'd better get that information for me," Rufus says in a sigh, rolling over. " Get it from him."

" From who?" I ask, my insides seizing up until I can't breathe.

" Whoever you're running back to," he mutters, not looking at me. " You're a strange person, Reno. I wouldn't have pegged you for taking in those girls. You spread yourself so thin, and for what?"

I can't answer that, so I leave without speaking, crashing into a bureau in the hall outside and cursing as a sharp corner digs into my shin. Feeling my way through the darkness, I somehow find the side door downstairs, and when I wrench it open the wind nearly blows it off its hinges.

It's dark outside, but it's a glowing kind of darkness, the darkness just before sunrise. The wind fights me all the way back to the dorms, makes me blind, makes me stumble against the side of buildings, slowing me down. Finally it makes me trip over something that I think is a pile of garbage, but ends up being a sleeping hobo.

" Hey, you shit!" he shrieks, grabbing my ankle when I try to get back up again.

" Let go!" I shout, kicking at him. I can't see anything for the wind in my face, dirt and dust stinging in the corners of both of my eyes.

" You ain't stealin' this tuna!" the man screams at me, and his voice seems to be coming from every direction, like it's the wind itself having it out with me while I feel around on the ground.

" Believe me, that's the last thing I--"

Suddenly I feel a stinging pain in my calf, and I turn to see the hobo slicing at me with a dull blade.

" It's mine, and I've had enough!" he says, coming at me with the knife again. The wind is slowing now, and I can see his crazy black eyes. I'm looking right into them when I pull the gun from my pants pocket and fire into his chest.

He flies backward with the last gust of wind, which seems to carry him a long way. And then it trickles to a breeze against the back of my ears, and finally dies, the sun breaking the horizon somewhere and lighting the streets. The man I shot is sprawled out in front of me, dead on his back, both of his hands open in the direction of the clearing sky.

I put the gun back in my pocket and walk away, wait for myself to go all shaky, wait for my stomach to pitch, wait to lean against a storefront and throw up.

But Rufus is right. I'm spreading myself too thin. I'm tired of caring. I'm done. I straighten my pants and limp back toward the dorms, my leg trailing blood behind me. The cut isn't deep, but it stings with every step.

Cloud is awake when I get back to the apartment. He's sitting at the kitchen table, his back slumped and his eyes heavy with exhaustion. When I come in he watches me limp to the table, and I sit down on the floor.

" You're hurt," he says.

" Yeah."

" Want me to fix it?" he asks deliriously.

" No. There's something else I need from you."

" What's that?" he asks, not moving.

" I need – you to tell me exactly where Sephiroth died," I say, unable to look at him. I feel like I haven't slept in weeks. I feel like I've never slept, like it's something I've only heard about from other people.

" What do you need that for?" he asks after a long pause.

" Rufus," I say simply, looking up at him now. He nods slowly, blinks.

" I can't give that to you," he says, sitting up straighter, watching me with something that I want to think is sympathy.

" Good," I say in a cracked voice, standing and going to him, lifting him out of the chair. He hops into my arms, kissing me, and I reel backward, my leg nearly going numb from the weight of him as he wraps himself around me. I stumble against the walls of the apartment, eyes closed, mouth on his, until we fall into the bedroom, landing on the bed.

" Let's go to Wutai," he begs as I kiss his neck, pull off his clothes, because this is the only way I know how to talk anymore, maybe the only way I ever really spoke to him. " Please," he says, limp on the bed. " I changed my mind. We could leave this morning."

" I can't give you that," I tell him, meeting his eyes for just a moment. " Ask me for something I can give you."

He doesn't have to ask. I know. And I don't bother to ask again for what I want from him. I don't just want him to fuck me, I want him to hurt me, and he wouldn't, so he doesn't, and I do.

* * *

A/N: This chapter is finally done! The hiatus was due to my thesis, which ended up being 65 pages long . . . and though that's double spaced, and this project has climbed to 200 pages single spaced . . . the academic stuff takes a lot longer to write! But it's done, and I'm in the final stages of editing now, so my updates to this fic will be regular again.

This chapter was also slow going for me because I'm so excited about starting the next three chapters, which take place entirely in the present, but I felt like I needed ONE more chapter with Rufus flashbacks just to get that character in the place where I need him for the rest of the story, so I hope you felt they worked here.

Don't worry about the girls who were brought into the Corneo mansion – they're not really five new characters, but just sort of a vague collection of people who stand more as a symbol for something (which will fluctuate throughout the story). I also just needed fresh blood around the Shinra hideout, as Palmer and Heidegger can only be amusing for so long. I just rolled out names for them because I got tired of referring to them as "the girl with the (insert hair color)" and what have you.

The scientists are important for their function in the plot, but I may end up doing more with them. I'm a big fan of just letting characters get possessed and do what they will – Elena wasn't meant to come along when the girls were brought into the mansion, but Reno invited her and there you are (that sounds completely insane, but some people will know what I mean – you get caught up in the momentum of a scene and realize that something will work better than what you had planned, and it truly feels like the characters dragging you along with them).

Alright, enough rambling. Please tell me what you thought; I know it's been awhile and some new tensions are introduced in this chapter – let me know if they came off well!


	11. Chapter 11

11.

It's two o'clock on a weekday afternoon and I'm sitting in the Wall Market mansion, looking up at the one tiny window in the room. Elena is behind me, cutting my hair, and Tseng is sitting across from us, pretending to read a newspaper.

" Why don't you just ask?" I mutter in the direction of the window. It's not rattling – the winds have stopped. But the change in weather is not necessarily a relief. A coolness has settled over Midgar since the winds blew out of town, and while it would normally be welcomed, all we can do after everything that has happened is interpret it as a bad omen: winter will be here soon, and there is no power. Only those of us within the walls of this mansion know that there is the potential for power, and the three of us in this room are probably the only ones who know what it would truly cost to take advantage of it.

" Ask what?" Tseng mutters, lifting his head.

" Whatever you came in here to ask," I say dryly, giving him a look. " I know you're not just hanging around so you can watch me get my hair cut."

" Reno, sit still," Elena says in a sigh, pulling back my bangs to snip them shorter. Tseng is just staring at me now, called out and irritated.

" I thought you might grow your hair back out," he says, still dancing around whatever favor he wants from me.

" Only losers have long hair," I tell him, pretending to yawn. Elena _tsk_s and swats my shoulder.

" You just can't pull it off," Tseng says, straightening his neat ponytail. " You never could."

" Alright, boys," Elena mutters, not looking up from her work.

" That's a fine way to talk right before you ask me for a favor," I say, feeling the usual teasing darken considerably.

" And you've adopted an interesting philosophy about talking to your superiors," he answers coolly, folding his paper.

" You're not my superior anymore," I snap, not taking my eyes off of him. He smiles a little bit, looking down at his shoes, freshly polished since the dust has stopped blowing through the streets all day long.

" If you don't work for Shinra anymore, why are you here?" he asks.

" You know why I'm here," I grumble.

" Whatever you're doing with Rufus," he says, raising an eyebrow. " You're working for him, one way or another. Believe me."

" Here," Elena interrupts hurriedly, thrusting a hand mirror at me. I inspect my hair, make a face.

" Too short in the front," I complain, patting down my bangs.

" Ungracious as always," Tseng says, sniggering at my haircut.

" Tseng, just ask him," Elena demands impatiently, putting her hands on my shoulders. He frowns and I give him a wicked grin, leaning back into her.

" It's not a favor for me," he says, sighing. " It's for Rufus."

" Well, whatever Rufus is doing," I say, standing and brushing pieces of red hair from my shirt. " It's a favor for you, one way or another. Believe me," I add, stepping closer to him. He shakes his head.

" It's really amazing that you've become our operative within the Avalanche camp," he says. " Rather unfortunate, too."

" What can I say, I'm a people person," I tell him, smirking.

" Meaning that you sleep with a wide variety of people, regardless of political ideology?" he returns, cocking his head slightly.

" Tseng!" Elena protests.

" Maybe you should go," I say, turning to her. " Wouldn't want you to see this side of your Prince Charming."

" I think you're both being ridiculous," she says, squaring her shoulders. " You're letting Rufus . . .,"

She trails off, shakes her head and folds up the towel she had around my shoulders while she was cutting my hair. She seems to want to say more, but doesn't, instead slipping quietly from the room.

" What does he want?" I ask Tseng when I turn back to him. He had his mouth open, but shuts it when I've spoken, wets his lips.

" Vincent Valentine," he says. " You know him?"

" Yeah. Big pale guy, real creepy, doesn't say much."

" That's him," Tseng mutters. " Rufus would like you to get some information from him."

" Information?" I still haven't managed to get the location of Sephiroth's death from Cloud, not that I've been trying. I've come to know Cloud well enough to realize that Sephiroth is one place you don't go, especially if you try once and come to a dead end. Rufus hasn't asked me about my efforts yet.

In fact, I haven't been speaking to either of them much, though I seem to be constantly in the presence of one or the other. There aren't many things left to say that don't lead into corners. I've thought about cutting my losses and leaving both of them out to dry, maybe running off to Costa del Sol or Gold Saucer, disappearing into sunlight and neon, but I know they would come with me. They might not be there in body, but no matter how many miles I put between us, I lost the chance to run from both of them a long time ago.

" Rufus wants to know about a woman Vincent used to serve as a sort of –special bodyguard for, when she worked for Shinra," Tseng explains.

" What woman?" I ask, though I could make an educated guess.

" Her name is not authorized for release," Tseng tells me evenly, and I give him an insincere grin, bat my eyelashes.

" Right."

" Vincent will know who you're talking about," he mutters. " Rufus just needs to know where she's located. Vincent might try to tell you that she's dead, but you should press on. Rufus believes she's alive."

" This is about his mother, isn't it?" I ask, swallowing heavily. Tseng turns his back to me, rubs his hands together, brings them to his face and sighs.

" This _is_ his mother," he says.

" Fuck. Tseng—"

" Are you going to do Rufus this favor, or aren't you?" he asks, knowing I don't have a choice. Or that I won't let myself have one.

" Why can't you do it?" I ask.

" I'm not exactly in the best of graces with that crowd," he says. " I haven't been doing my – er, what do they call it? 'Reconstruction' duties." He laughs.

" Neither has Vincent," I tell him. " I haven't even seen him lurking around in weeks. He might have left."

" No, he's there," Tseng says, eyes unfocused. " And anyway, I can't – Vincent and I have something of a history."

" Of course you do."

" He used to be a Turk," he tells me, looking up.

" You shittin' me?" I ask, making a face when I think of vampiric, weepy-eyed Vincent.

" No."

" Why'd he quit?"

" Things got complicated," Tseng mutters in response, starting for the door. " He won't exactly be anxious to talk about this woman, or anything to do with Shinra. You'll have to tell him that you want to inform her that her son has passed away."

" Wouldn't she know?" I ask, thinking of the news stories after the attack by Diamond weapon.

" She might," Tseng says with a shrug, reaching the door. " But Vincent doesn't know that. Are you alright to do this, Reno?"

" What's in it for me?" I grumble, meaning yes.

" Every favor for Rufus is really a favor for you," he answers easily before breezing out of the room.

* * *

I leave Wall Market without seeing Rufus, who is locked up in a meeting room with his scientists. I still don't know what they're doing there, but I assume it has something to do with the mako reactors housed underground, and how Rufus is going to use them to his advantage. I've been trying to stay out of the master plan as much as possible, which is part of the reason why Tseng's handed-down order to interrogate Vincent is bothering me.

When I get back to the dorms I expect to find them mostly empty, everyone outside toiling away at the worksite. But I hear voices when I come to my apartment's door, and lean in to try and make out what they're saying. One of them is Cloud's, and the other is a woman's. I have a pretty good guess as to who it belongs to.

I open the door and see him leaning in the doorway of our bedroom, looking irritated, Tifa standing before him with her hands on her hips. Neither of them is even partially undressed, and while I'm not exactly surprised, it's still something of a relief.

" What are you doing here?" Tifa barks before I can get a word out. From the looks of things she and Cloud have just had some kind of disagreement, and she seems all too ready to take some frustration out on me.

" Uh. Lunch break?" I say with a disinterested shrug. I haven't been to the worksite yet today, and yesterday I only stayed to keep Cloud company for a few hours before sneaking off to Wall Market. Elena and Tseng haven't been in a week.

" Don't think that just because you've—whatever—" she glances back at Cloud uncertainly. " That you can get out of work. And where are the other Turks?" she demands, walking toward me.

" Hey, how about you, sister?" I snap. " I don't see you out there whistling while you work, and I didn't see you yesterday, either."

" Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't there," she says quickly. " And I'm on lunch duty."

" Lunch was two hours ago," I remind her.

" Well, there goes your excuse!" she says, stopping to put a hand to her forehead. She's dressed for work, wearing a giant pair of overalls and a baggy t-shirt, but her clothes are clean and her hair doesn't have that matted-sweat look that a day's worth of hard labor brings.

" Calm down, you're gonna have a stroke," I mutter, glancing at Cloud. He's stepped back, half of him inside the bedroom now, his head peeking around the doorframe. Just to spite both of them and whatever little secret discussion they were having, I go to the kitchen counter and rifle through my modest liquor stash, coming out with a bottle of vodka and drinking from it.

" Starting a little early, aren't you?" Tifa asks, straightening and looking back to Cloud, as if he should have something to say about this.

" Here, have a sip," I say, offering her the bottle. " You look like you could use it."

" No," she says, shaking her head and going for the door. " I've got work to do, unlike some people. You know, Reno, there are going to be consequences."

" What consequences?" I roar, drinking again, tired of the idle threats. I almost wish they _would_ actually try to do something to punish me for not showing up to work, as it would make deciding whose side I'm on a lot easier.

" You think about what I said," she says, talking to Cloud now. He shakes his head, and Tifa gives me one last dirty look before walking out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

" Thanks for sticking up for me!" I shout at him, drinking again.

" What's the matter with you?" he asks, narrowing his eyes.

" With _me_?" I ask in disbelief, sitting down at the table, already feeling the effects of the vodka against my mostly-empty stomach.

" What happened to your hair?" he asks, making a face. I reach up to pat my short bangs down self-consciously.

" Elena happened."

" I would have done it," he mutters, scratching the back of his neck, embarrassed.

" Don't worry about it," I grumble.

" Is that where you were?" he asks. " With her?"

" Yeah," I answer, sighing, putting the cap back on the bottle. " What's Tifa's problem?"

" A lot of things," Cloud says.

" No shit."

" I didn't mean it like that," he tells me, frowning.

" Yeah, well."

" Are you going to stop working?" he asks cautiously, after a pause.

" Why, you think they'll really arrest me if I do?"

" Reeve might try," he says, walking over to sit next to me at the table. He reaches up to brush short red hairs from my forehead.

" I would have given you a better haircut," he says.

" Like you've ever given anyone a haircut before," I say with a scoff, putting my head down on the table next to the bottle of vodka. " Does it really look that bad?" I mumble.

" No," he says, tilting his head to look at me. " Well. The front, yes."

" This is shaping up to be a great fucking day, I'll tell you what," I grumble, reaching up to unscrew the cap on the bottle again. Cloud catches my hand.

" I'll make you feel better," he says, stopping off my aggravated glare.

" Shall I unzip?" I ask, releasing the bottle.

" Just come here, smartass," he mutters, walking into the bedroom. I watch him go and toy with the idea of taking one more defiant slug before following. I want to press him about his conversation with Tifa, but I know I can't. If I do he might start asking questions about Rufus, and I'm not willing to give him any answers yet.

When I get into the bedroom he pulls me onto the bed and rolls me over on my stomach. I groan with disappointment, realizing this means I won't be on the receiving end of a blow job, but when he squats over my back and starts working on my muscles I give him a long sigh of approval.

" You're tense," he says.

" Duh."

" What's bothering you?" he asks.

" Are you fucking kidding me?" I say with a laugh, and he stabs harder at a knot in my back. " What _isn't_?"

" You didn't seem like an anxious person, back when you were a Turk," he says, moving down to my lower back.

" Harder," I mumble, drooling on the sheets, and he obliges. " It's not that I'm anxious," I tell him, eyes falling shut. " It's more that I'm beleaguered. Is that a word?"

" I think so, yeah," he says, moving up my back with his thumbs. " Anyway, I know what you mean."

" I know you do."

" I've been thinking," he says, his voice small. " Maybe we _should_ go to Wutai."

My eyes snap open again.

" Listen, I need a favor from you," I say, ignoring his request. I can't think about leaving right now, not with him. If we left together, Rufus would come with us. He would be a ghost again, but he'd still be there.

" What do you need?" he asks, bending down so that his lips are on my neck. I sigh against the mattress, wanting to roll over but staying in place, facing away from him. I wish he would flip me himself, but he's not making a lot of first moves these days.

" You know that guy Vincent?" I mutter. " I need to talk to him."

" So what do you want me to do?" he asks, sitting up again.

" Should I just go knock on his door?" I ask. " Or what's the deal? He seems kind of – odd."

" He's odd, but he's friendly," Cloud tells me. " I could invite him over for dinner or something."

" You know I don't eat dinner here," I say, my muscles going tight again. He slides off of me, sits against the back of the bed. I'm still staring into space, my head on the mattress, but I can see his elbow out of the corner of my eye. I wish I could look at him. I wish he would make me look at him.

" This is for Rufus, isn't it?" he asks, the pathetic tone in his voice making me want to pummel him.

" Don't start acting like a goddamn woman," I snarl, sitting up, trying to wake myself. " You know who it's for, now can you help me or not?"

When I do finally look over he's looking all wounded, shoulders shrunk. I want him to get mad; I've never wanted anything more. I can't do this with someone who doesn't get mad.

" Why can't we just go?" he says, shaking his head, looking away. " Why can't we just go to Wutai? Everything would be here when we came back."

" No it wouldn't," I say automatically, knowing I'm right.

" So what?" he mutters.

" Don't pretend you don't care about _your _friends," I snap. " You and Tifa were having a real heated conversation up here earlier—I don't suppose you want to tell me what that was about?"

He moves his bottom lip slightly, one mako eye crinkles at the corner, and I know the answer, knew it.

" You don't understand," he says pleadingly.

" Neither do you," I tell him, standing. " Why aren't you out there working, by the way?" I ask, walking to the door.

" I guess I don't care anymore," he mutters, not meeting my eyes.

" Liar," I say, turning to go. I want him to come after me, even if just to punch me in the face, maybe for that more than anything, but he doesn't.

* * *

Knocking on Vincent's door, I don't really expect him to answer, so when he pulls it open abruptly after the third knock I stumble backward in surprise. The creep seems to have gotten even paler since the last time I saw him slinking around the premises in his fey little cape, and the room behind him is, predictably, pitch black. I wait for him to produce a firearm of some sort and tell me to get off of his property, but instead he stands waiting, expressionless.

" Eh, Vincent?"

" Hello, Reno," he says. " How can I help you?"

" Just, uh, wanted to talk to you," I say, touching my hair, suddenly nervous.

" About?" he asks patiently. He's much more soft spoken than I expected—I don't think I've ever heard him talk before.

" Uh, you used to be a Turk?" I blurt out, and his eyes change immediately. They don't exactly go dark, but the corners flatten out, and there is a dull sort of recognition that isn't pleasant.

" That's true," he says, glancing behind me.

" Listen, can I come in?" I ask, turning to look back myself. " I sort of need to talk to you about the old days, eh heh."

" I suppose that's alright," he says after a pause. " Just let me open the curtains. I was napping, you see."

He turns and goes into the apartment, and I wait for some kind of signal to follow him in, assuming he's cleaning up the afternoon's animal sacrifices or something. But after getting no such signal and seeing light stream in through the far windows, I wander nervously inside, shutting the front door behind me.

The main room in Vincent's apartment is sparse and surprisingly clean. In the center of the room there is a worn rug and a small table, a deck of cards and a half-empty bottle of wine on top. The furniture consists of a motley collection of wooden chairs, and he offers me one beside the window, where he has drawn back the heavy blankets that are draped over the curtain rods.

" Thanks," I mutter, falling into a seat. I wait for him to sit down, but he simply stands in front of me, most of his face still hidden behind the collar of his giant cape.

" Would you like me to sit?" he asks, after I'm silent for a few panicked moments. " Would that make you more comfortable?"

" Yes," I answer easily, and I think I see him smiling—in his eyes, anyway—before he goes for a chair, pulls it over and sits across from me, folding his hands in his lap.

" I'm sorry, I don't entertain many people," he says. I want to ask him to take his cape off, too, but decide that would be a little presumptuous.

" That's alright," I say, glancing out the window. I start to think about the story Tseng told me to feed him, about wanting to tell Rufus' mother about his death, but I didn't really get it together before I stormed upstairs after my fight with Cloud, and now that I'm here something tells me this bastard could see through a lie without blinking.

" Listen, you know Rufus Shinra?" I say in a long breath. He nods.

" He's alive," I admit, my heart jerking as I say it. Vincent raises his eyebrows, pulls down his cape so that I can see his mouth.

" Are you sure?" he asks, his voice different.

" Yes. He wants—he needs your help."

" My help?" he says, looking at the ground, laughing darkly to himself. " I was never very good at helping the Shinras."

" He needs some information about this woman, see," I explain awkwardly, pulling at my collar. Vincent's demeanor has quietly gone from relaxed and dreamy to rigid and alarmed.

" A woman?" he asks sharply, leaning forward.

" He said you'd know who he meant," I say, trying to meet his eyes, glancing away.

Vincent sits back, runs his tongue over his teeth. I'm not sure why, but I feel exactly the way I did when I was questioning Cloud about Sephiroth, and not just because I'm reluctantly doing Rufus' bidding without any real reason, again.

" Lucrecia," he says breathlessly. " She was—I don't know that she could help Rufus, either." He goes to the window, puts a hand over his face.

I start to ask him if this woman was Rufus' real mother, but then think better of it, since I've already crossed the line by admitting that he's alive.

" He doesn't want her help, really, he just wants to see her," I explain, though I'm not sure I'm right. " He just needs to know where she is."

" She doesn't want visitors," he says sharply, gripping the window sill.

" Not even Rufus?" I ask uncertainly, my heart pounding at the base of my throat.

Vincent is quiet for a long time, staring out the window. In the sunlight his pale skin looks almost translucent.

" Why did you leave the Turks?" I hear myself asking, unable to stand the silence.

He laughs a little.

" You might say I was asked to leave," he mutters.

" If Shinra fucked you over, I'm sorry," I say, standing. " Join the club. But Rufus—I know it doesn't seem like it, but he's a—well, he needs help."

" She won't help him," he says quietly, looking away from me. " He doesn't know . . .,"

" He needs to find out, then," I tell him. " He's obsessed with this—this idea—look, he just needs a reality check, some kind of closure. If she can give him that, at least—"

" Closure!" Vincent says, his voice suddenly loud, full of mirthless laughter. " The only real closure, my friend, comes from realizing that such a thing cannot be achieved."

" Uh. Yeah. Look, could you just help me out here, man? I'm gonna get my ass kicked if I don't come through on this."

" Is it really violent retribution that you're afraid of?" he asks, calm again, casting me a sly look. " You're bold enough to test Avalanche's patience by not reporting for duty at the worksite."

" How did you know about that?" I ask, frowning. " You haven't been around in weeks."

" I see a lot of things," he mutters, smiling to himself. " And your weakness, I'm afraid, is that you do not. Worst of all, you think that you do."

" Yeah, whatever," I snarl, getting impatient. " You're wise and all-seeing and I'm a fucking dolt who's blind-drunk most of the time—believe me, pal, I get that line from just about everyone I know. Are you gonna tell me where this broad is or what?"

" I'll do you one better," he says evenly, straightening to look at me, his impressive frame blocking the sun through the window. " I'll take you there."

* * *

Not wanting to face Cloud again, I hurry over to Wall Market at dinnertime to give Rufus the good news, that Vincent is willing to lead a mother-hunting expedition. I decide that my admitting that he's alive can be forgiven, since I came through on this, and with such a quick turnaround. Maybe he'll even forget about the information he wanted about Sephiroth, which I'm pretty sure I'll never get, least of all from Cloud.

When I get there the loud girl, Ana, opens the door for me. She seems to have been designated as lead security prostitute, while her friends have been assigned to kitchen or cleaning duties. She gives me a grin as she lets me inside, slapping me on the back.

" Hey, Big Red!" she says gleefully.

" You know, I'm not particularly fond of that nickname," I tell her, sniffing the musty air to try and get a hint of what the other gals are cooking for dinner.

" Check this out," she says, lifting up her shirt and pooching out her stomach as far as she can. " Actual fat! I have a stomach! Can you believe it?"

" Hey, congrats," I mutter, moving ahead through the hall. Just last week she was spitting at the mention of Rufus' name, and the transformation from anti-Shinra activist to embracing the hand that manipulatively feeds you is not exactly a phenomenon I relish, though I certainly can't blame her.

When I get into the dining hall the usual crowd has assembled—Elena is sitting on the stairs braiding the hair of Marty, another one of the girls we haphazardly rescued, who is playing cards with Cooper. Palmer is eating handfuls from a bowl of nuts while Quara and the two other girls set the table, and Tseng, Heidegger, Gordon and Rufus are nowhere to be found, as has become typical. Occasionally even Heidegger is booted out of the inner circle.

" Where's Rude?" I ask, heading for the drink cart.

" Back at the dorms, with Scarlet," Elena calls from the stairs. " She's been lonely."

" Rufus still doesn't want her here?" I ask, pouring myself the last of the brandy.

" I think it's the other way around," Elena says.

" Hmm." I walk over to the three of them, watch the card game for a few minutes. They're playing poker, but there's no betting pool as far as I can see.

" Rufus isn't paying you to entertain the kitchen staff," Palmer grumbles, his mouth full of cashews. Cooper looks up.

" Gordon doesn't want me in there," he says, gesturing to the meeting room. It used to be some kind of pleasure chamber, but, like most things in this brave new world, it has been transformed into something a bit more utilitarian.

" How about you?" Palmer says, gesturing to Marty. " Shouldn't you be polishing silverware or something?"

" Shouldn't you be, like, designing rockets?" I snap, turning on him. " Or whatever the hell you're supposed to do. Why_ are_ you here, Palmer?"

" None of your business!" he huffs, going red and turning back to his bowl of nuts.

" How about you?" I ask, turning back to Cooper, who looks up at me over his bad hand of cards. " What the hell did he hire you for?"

" I don't think I'm supposed to say," he mumbles, glancing around. He can't be more than five years older than me, and he's wearing a brown button-down shirt over cargo pants, looking more like a janitor than a scientist.

" You were a student of Hojo's or something?" I guess, leaning on the banister. Marty looks up with interest for his answer.

" No," Cooper says, smiling a little. " I never met him. I heard he was inhumane."

" Well, you're working for Shinra," I say with a shrug. " You should know all about that."

" Reno, please," Elena mutters, finishing with Marty's hair and smoothing it down. " Just let it go. Have something to eat." She looks up and nods to the plates the girls are bringing in.

" Food supply's getting low," Palmer mumbles, surveying the small roast chickens and piles of yellow rice.

" Alcohol, too," I add, draining my brandy and giving the empty glass a shake.

We all sit around the table, the girls and Cooper at one end and the rest of us at the other. Elena picks at her rice slowly while Palmer nearly devours an entire chicken himself. The door to the meeting room doesn't open until everyone has finished, all of us sitting with our elbows on the table, slouching in our chairs. Only Palmer and the girls sit up straighter when Rufus enters the room.

" God, chicken again?" he mutters, making a face. " How old is this stuff, anyway? We need to send out for supplies."

" I'd be happy to make a list, sir!" Palmer chirps.

" Thanks, but I think I'll send someone a little more conservative when it comes to food," Rufus says, standing in place as Tseng, Gordon and Heidegger take their seats at the table.

" What do you care, you eat ice cream for dinner every night, anyway," I mumble without thinking, far too sober at this late hour and dreaming of my vodka bottle at home, among other things.

" Ice cream!" three of the girls shout in unison.

" We were wondering if you had more!" Ana says, clapping her hands together.

" More?" Rufus says slowly, looking at me with irritation.

" Don't get all pissed off, I have some good news for you," I tell him, tipping back my empty brandy glass for the thousandth time, trying to get some invisible last drops out.

" Perhaps you should tell Rufus the good news in private," Tseng says quickly, pausing in the midst of reaching for a bowl of rice.

" Is this about that component we discussed?" Gordon asks with poorly concealed excitement, and Rufus shoots her a look that instantly calms her down.

" Let me find out," he says, flicking his head toward the stairs and walking from the table, indicating that I should follow him up. Elena and I exchange a look before I get up.

" By the way, Cl—my haircut hasn't exactly been a huge hit," I tell her, throwing down my napkin.

" Sorry to hear that," she says, smiling wickedly. " And nice save," she adds under her breath, watching me go.

Rufus disappears into his bedroom and I slip inside after him, shutting the door behind us.

" I guess I'm not allowed in the meeting room, huh?" I say, putting my hands in my pockets and watching as he drops onto the bed. " That's okay, I'm much more at home in a place like this, as you know."

" Did you find her?" Rufus asks breathlessly, ignoring my joke. " Is that the good news? Or is it—him?"

" Him? Sephiroth? No, I spoke to Vincent, like you wanted," I tell him. " He didn't exactly tell me where this—what was her name? Lulu?"

" Lucrecia," Rufus says, clipped.

" Right, that's what I said. Well, he didn't tell me where she is, but he did say he'd take us there."

Rufus is silent for a moment.

" Us?" he says tightly.

" Oh yeah. I told him you're alive. Whoops."

" Reno," he moans, putting his head in his hands. He stares at the floor for a moment, then lifts his eyes to mine again, takes a deep breath. " Might he have been lying?" he asks.

" I don't think so," I say. " He doesn't seem like the type."

" You mean because he's in Avalanche?" Rufus asks, raising an eyebrow.

" There is no more Avalanche," I say weakly, knowing it's not true. _No more Avalanche and no more Shinra_. Who was it who told me that? Or did I say it myself?

" Don't be naive," Rufus says with a scoff, standing. " And by the way, what in God's name did you do to your hair?"

" Elena cut it," I mumble, embarrassed. Rufus walks to me and pulls a hand through my hair, rearranges it with a critical eye. When he's done he shifts his eyes down to mine, and smiles a little.

" Thank you for doing that for me," he says. " We'll go together, you and I, with Vincent."

" What, you aren't bringing your scientists?" I mutter.

" No, they have work to do here," he says, stepping away from me as if remembering himself. " I may bring the other Turks, though, for protection. That would be a laugh, wouldn't it? The four of you together again, accompanying me on an intelligence gathering mission?"

" Intelligence gathering?" I blurt without thinking. " I thought this was about your mother."

He freezes in the middle of pacing the room, his back to me.

" What made you think that?" he asks, his shoulders going back. Since that year in Junon it has always seemed that Rufus thinks he can fight anything off if he just stands straight enough.

" Nothing," I lie, my face going red, wondering why he doesn't want me to know. " Remember when you told me that you would tell me everything?" I ask him with something that was supposed to be a laugh.

" I never said that," he says, still not looking at me.

" Fine," I mumble, going for the door. Rufus catches me around the waist before I can reach it, pulling me backward.

" I'm sorry," he says, pressing his face into my back. His hot breath feels good there, so damn familiar, even through my shirt.

" For what?" I ask, though I'm sure I don't want to know. I stare at the door, wondering why I can't barrel through it, wondering why the very idea of leaving him hanging still makes me want to turn and start apologizing myself.

" Everything," he whispers. " You'll see."

* * *

It's late when I start back for the dorms, and I feel wide awake as I make my way through the dark streets, bothered by the stillness and my own sobriety. The gun Rufus gave me is in my back pocket; I've been carrying it with me since I shot the man who attacked me. I can't be sure where I killed him exactly, as the wind was so strong that day, and I was in something of a mindless trance when I left him for dead. As I walk past the remaining landscape I keep thinking I recognize the place, every night, all the way home, keep waiting to see his bones lying there, picked clean by rats. I haven't fired another bullet since that night, but I haven't given up the gun, either.

Cloud still thinks Elena has it, for all I know. I've been hiding it in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom when I come in at night. I'm not sure why I don't want him to know about it, but it's just another way that I've gotten farther away from him as I try to keep the rest of my life from blowing up in his face.

When I get back to the apartment I half expect to find he and Tifa in middle of another secret conversation, and I'm relieved when I see him instead sitting at the kitchen table and reading something. But when I come in he quickly snaps it up and sticks it into his back pocket.

" What's that?" I ask instantly, standing at the door.

" Nothing," he says, folding his hands on the table.

I mumble a string of obscenities under my breath, stomping into the bedroom. Behind me, I hear him come sheepishly to the door, and he watches me as I pull out my duffel bag and start filling it with dirty clothes.

" What are you doing?" he asks after a few minutes.

" Packing."

" Haven't we had this conversation before?" he asks, coming in to sit on the bed.

" Probably," I say, not looking at him, folding socks before throwing them in, just to keep myself busy. I'm pretty sure some of the mismatched pairs I've packed are his, but I pretend not to notice.

" Change your mind about Wutai?" he asks hopefully, though I'm sure he knows I haven't.

" I'm going away for awhile, with Rufus and Tseng. Maybe Elena and Rude, too," I say, zipping my bag, then unzipping it, pointlessly shuffling the contents around.

" Reno," he says, and something in his tone sets me off. I jump off the floor and pounce on him, push him roughly back onto the bed. He doesn't fight me, even when I reach back to yank the booklet he was reading at the table out of his pocket. I look down at it, my knees clamped around his legs and holding him in place on the bed, and it takes me a moment to be able to think clearly enough to read the title on the cover.

" Loveless?" I say, making a face. I flip through the booklet and see that it's a program for some play. It's worn on the edges and a few pages are missing. I look down at Cloud incredulously, waiting for an explanation.

" I told her I'd take her," he says, his cheeks going pink.

" Tifa?" I ask, crumpling the thing in my hand. He shoots up and shoves me off without warning, yanking the booklet away from me as I fall off of the bed.

" Aeris," he says after I've landed on the floor, wincing. He puts the booklet down against the sheets and smoothes it out carefully. " She wanted to see it, but couldn't afford a ticket. She told me while we were traveling. I told her I'd take her back to Midgar someday, that we'd see it together."

" You can't go back to Midgar," I grumble from the floor, running my hands through my too-short hair. " Not like that."

" I think I knew it would never happen," he says, his voice strained. " I took her to some stupid show at Gold Saucer. God, that was pathetic. This looks like it would have been real, I don't know. Arty. I found this thing on the ground when we came back to Midgar without her. Someone just threw it away. She would have kept it, you know? If we'd ever gotten to go, she would have kept it. Sometimes I just get it out and look at it," he adds pathetically, putting his hands over the wrinkled pages.

I want to apologize but I can't. We all have our ghosts. I guess I should learn not to ask.

" I'm leaving in the morning," I tell him, standing, brushing off my pants for effect. " Don't let me sleep too late."

I wait for him to ask me why I don't just leave now, but he's staring down at his ruined keepsake, mesmerized. I scoff and turn to go for the kitchen, for that bottle of vodka.

" I'm going with you," he says when I reach the door.

" Haven't we had _this _conversation before?" I ask with a sneer, half-turning back.

" I don't care what you say," he tells me, his face blank. " I'm going with you."

" Like hell you are."

" I'm going with you or I'm telling Tifa," he says, his eyes glowing cold. " I'll tell her everything about Rufus."

I'm stunned into silence for a moment, staring at him. His expression is bare and unfamiliar, the sentimental fool who was just pouring over his tragedy suddenly long gone. I think this is the face Sephiroth must have looked into before Cloud put a sword through his chest, and I think I know how he felt.

" You don't have any proof," I choke out.

" I could take her there," he says coolly. " To the mansion in Wall Market. I could show her everything, have Barrett and Cid clean the place out."

" How—"

" I followed you," he says, almost smiling now. " You know, you're worse than Tifa. You think I'm such an idiot."

I fly at him, fist arching back, but he catches my blow easily, and rises from the bed with effortless strength, pushing me backward until my back crashes against the wall, so hard that I'm dizzy for a few seconds, staggering in his grip.

" People underestimate me," he says when my eyes find his. " You especially."

" Get off me you son of a—"

He lifts me toward him and then slams me back against the wall, making my mind go hazy again. When I get my wits back I try to fight him off, even as he leans in to kiss me, my arms shoving hopelessly against his as I whimper into his mouth in frustration.

" Even after everything I've done," he says, pulling back, his nose brushing against mine with an odd tenderness as I struggle to breathe in choked gasps. " People still underestimate me. Did you think I was just going to sit back and watch him turn you into his lap dog again?"

I rage against him one last time, screaming as I push him away, my face burning, the humiliation of his attempt at understanding Rufus and I searing under my skin. He takes the bait and pulls me from the wall by my shirt, spinning me around until I've landed hard against the bed, my stomach bouncing against the side of the mattress.

" You did, you thought I'd just throw up my hands," he says, speaking through gritted teeth now. He yanks wildly at my belt, and though I don't try stop him I'm more than a little nervous in the face of what I've considered goading him into for some time now.

" You want to be treated like shit, I can do that, too," he growls in my ear.

He fucks me until tears escape the corners of my eyes, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm relieved, or because it hurts, or because I'm relieved that it hurts. My own dick is trapped inside my half-down pants and underwear, smashed hard against the side of the bed, and jerking against the mattress inside the tight fabric makes me come even before he does. He seems to take ages, and not just because I'm sore. When he finally finishes he cries out in what sounds fairly close to pain, sliding out of me and down to the floor, pulling me into his lap as he goes. I lean forward, my head against the side of the bed, and listen to the two of us straining to breathe normally for a few minutes.

" Fine, come with me," I say, as if it was my idea, as if I haven't finally learned that I was never in a position to give him permission to do anything. I crawl up into the bed, hands shaking, shedding my clothes and throwing them over the side. Facing away from him, I hear him go into the bathroom and run the water, stumbling out of his own pants as he goes. When he gets into bed behind me I wait for some kind of sign to turn toward him, because I want to, because my heart is racing and I'll never sleep.

" C'mere," he says, his voice a little hoarse. I roll over and give him an annoyed look, as if I was trying to sleep and not waiting for his cue. He doesn't meet my eyes, but frowns down at my hair, pushing aside the remains of my bangs, concentrating, pursing his lips.

" It's no use," I say, before I can stop myself, " He already tried."

Cloud smiles slowly and looks at me, mako eyes blazing but not angry anymore—victorious now, satisfied, retired.

" What are you going to tell him?" he asks, not bothering to conceal his amusement.

" Don't worry about it," I snap, glowering at him. He grins and puts his head to the pillow, tucks his hands under his chin, transforming, with unsettling ease, back into the kid I've apparently underestimated.

" You wouldn't really tell Tifa," I whisper irritably, rolling away from him.

" Want to try me?" he asks, his voice muffled by his hand but not lacking conviction.

" Shut up," I mumble, my heart thumping hard against the mattress.

" I'll do what I have to," he says after some time as passed, both of us pretending to try and sleep. " I always have."

I think again of Sephiroth, though just doing so gives me goosebumps, suddenly. How he must have thought he had it all worked out, because when the chips were down Cloud would ride whatever wave he had to in order to stay at his side. Cloud, the only one who really had any chance of screwing up his plans—Sephiroth must have _known_ that he was in control, because Cloud was confused, because he held onto things and let himself get led around.

More than watching the world he thought he had claimed crumble around him, more than the hole in his chest, I think looking down at the sword that went through him and realizing he was wrong about Cloud must have stung most of all.

* * *

In the morning I wake from a hour of thin sleep to a room that feels cold. For a moment I'm afraid I've stayed the night in Rufus' bedroom, but when I sit up I see Cloud sleeping at my side, having inched closer to me during the night. He opens his eyes when I stir, blinks at me and leaves his hand curled over his mouth.

" I can't do this," I tell him, thinking of the night before, of his demand to come along with us. I can't let he and Rufus get within a hundred feet of each other. They both might survive whatever struggle would ensue, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.

" I know," he says sweetly, and I'm fooled for a moment. " That's why I'm doing it for you," he assures me, kissing my forehead before climbing out of bed.

" Fucking bastard," I grumble, sitting up, a sick feeling lurking heavy in my stomach. Cloud goes into the bathroom, pretending not to hear me, and washes his face. When he's done he opens the medicine cabinet and takes out the gun. In light of everything that happened last night, I almost expect him to turn and empty it into my chest.

" Might want to take this," he says, walking to me and putting it carefully in my hand. " Traveling on the roads is dangerous."

" Should I even ask how you know about this?" I mutter, glaring at him.

" I'm not stupid," he says, moving to the corner of the room, where his sword rests against the wall, gathering dust. He gives it a loving stroke before dressing and pulling his sheath over his head, slipping the sword into it. Fuming, I dress quickly and jam the gun into my pocket, retrieving my night stick from the opposite corner of the room.

" So where are we going, exactly?" he asks, hoisting my duffel bag onto his shoulder. I walk over and yank it out of his hands, slinging it over my back.

" I don't know," I snarl, heading for the door.

" Really?" he says, following me. " You're sure bringing a lot of clothes. Don't you want to eat something before we leave?" he asks when I get to the door.

" I'm not hungry," I tell him honestly, my stomach churning. I'm supposed to meet Vincent down in the lobby and then take him to the outskirts of town, where Rufus will have a vehicle waiting with the other Turks. I don't know what I'll tell them about Cloud, and I don't know if Cloud will call me on my lie if I come up with one. I have no idea what he'll do at any given moment, at this point.

As we walk downstairs, Cloud scribbles a note for Tifa on a slip of paper. When we reach the lobby he leaves it with a volunteer worker who is setting out the day's community breakfast. I give him an unappreciative look as he makes his way over to the front doors, where Vincent is waiting.

" I just wanted to let everyone know where we'll be," he says.

" But you don't know where we'll be," I snap.

" I thought Wutai would be a good cover," he tells me with a dark look.

" You're coming with us?" Vincent asks, frowning behind his collar. Cloud nods.

" That's alright, isn't it?" he asks.

" No," I answer easily.

" I – suppose," Vincent says, looking between the two of us. " Has Reno told you what we're doing?"

" I don't particularly care," Cloud says brightly, going for the door. Vincent looks at me quizzically.

" You said you 'see' a lot of things," I remind him, deadpan. " If you can't figure this out, then you're clearly full of shit."

" That was rather uncalled for," he mutters as I push my way outside.

" Wait!" someone calls shrilly, making us both turn. Standing at the foot of the stairs is Scarlet, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, her long blonde hair sloppy around her shoulders. She jogs toward me, hellfire in her eyes. She looks a lot like her brother when she's angry. Rude appears on the stairs behind her just as she reaches me, dressed in his usual suit and sunglasses, looking concerned.

" You can't," she says, grabbing my arms.

" Can't what?" I ask, shrugging her off. " What's wrong with you?"

" Rude told me what you're doing," she says, out of breath. " He said you're leaving to find this woman, Hojo's assistant?"

Vincent bristles beside me, and I glance over at him and then back to Rude, who is lingering on the stairs. He doesn't have a bag or any guns with him.

" C'mere," I say in a hushed growl, grabbing Scarlet's arm and pulling her away from Vincent, back to the foot of the stairs.

" Who said anything about Hojo?" I whisper to the two of them, peeking back at Vincent, who is watching us with interest.

" Rude said you're looking for Lucrecia," Scarlet says.

" Wow, that's the first time Rude has remembered the name of a woman he's known for under a decade," I say with a scoff, giving him an irritated look. " Great timing on developing that talent, my friend."

" I didn't want to lie," he mutters. " Not to Scarlet. Rufus is her brother."

" Please, you can't let him go," she says, grabbing at me again. " I'm serious, Reno. This woman is—it's the worst possible thing for my brother."

" Why?" I ask, looking back to Vincent.

" I can't explain it all right now," Scarlet hisses. " Just trust me."

" Since when have I had the power to stop Rufus from doing something?" I ask, glaring at her.

" Well what good are you if you can't?" she says, her voice cracking. " You're the only one who ever had a chance."

" I've got enough problems right now," I snarl, pushing away from her. " If you want to protect your brother from himself, you're a little late. But be my guest if you'd like to try. I'm through."

" Then why are you going with him?" she asks, stopping me in my tracks. " I know what your life is like now, Reno, and I know what it was like before. Why do you still bother to pretend not to care, if you're going to chase him around on this—"

" Just leave me alone!" I shout childishly, hurrying ahead to Vincent. I turn back and glare at Rude.

" Come on!" I call. " We're leaving."

" I'm not coming," he says weakly, stepping down to stand beside Scarlet. She hooks an arm through his.

" Spider woman," I mutter, turning to push through the front doors. Outside the sun is already up, but there is a chill in the air. Vincent follows me out, and we walk to Cloud, who is waiting on the drive.

" What's the hold up?" he asks.

" Yes, what was that all about?" Vincent asks me.

" Just a little Shinra family business," I mumble, walking ahead of them.

" You're a member of the family now?" Cloud asks with a scoff.

" Okay, raise your hand if you _don't _feel like the bastard child that Shinra tormented and left for dead!" I shout, whirling on both of them. They step back and give each other an embarrassed glance. Neither of them raises their hand.

" Let's go!" I grumble, hoisting my duffel bag and heading for the edge of the city, furious. As if Scarlet needs to tell me that Rufus is headed for disaster. At least I'm going with him, down with the ship, instead of standing on the shore and telling him where he went wrong while he sinks.

* * *

By the time we reach the rendezvous point on the edge of the city, the walls of my heart feel like they've grown paper-thin from the strain of its violent beating, and I'm waiting to explode from the inside out with every step. Elena and Tseng are leaning on a buggy that Rufus has procured for the trip, both wearing their Turk-issue sunglasses, which they pull down when they see the three of us approaching, staring in disbelief.

" _Cloud_?" Elena says, as if this couldn't possibly be who she is actually seeing, as if Rude is going to pull off the mask any minute.

" What's going on, Reno?" Tseng asks, reaching for his gun.

" Relax, you paranoid ass," I sneer. " Cloud is coming in Rude's place. Scarlet got to him."

" What do you mean she got to him?" comes a voice from inside the buggy, and Rufus' head pops up in the window. He's got a blanket wrapped around him as a makeshift disguise, and all I can see are his nose and lips. Despite the situation, I burst into laughter when I see him looking like a talking quilt.

" So it's true!" Vincent says in a hushed voice. " You have survived."

Rufus pulls the corner of the blanket away to peek out at Vincent with one gray eye. His gaze shifts quickly to Cloud when he spots him standing behind me.

" Cloud Strife?" he mutters. " Wha—Oh. Ah _ha_!" He glances over to watch me turn red, and now it's his turn to laugh wildly. Cloud pokes at the inside of his cheek with his tongue, and I wonder if he regrets coming, and if I could possibly feel sorry for him.

" Um, should we get going?" Elena asks, uncomfortable.

" I don't like this," Tseng fumes, staring at Cloud.

" Oh shut up," I snarl. " He came with us to rescue your ungrateful ass."

" The last—the last one of them—oh ho ho!" Rufus is laughing too hard to speak, collapsing into a pile of blanket on the floor of the buggy. " The last one of them I expected to defect was Cloud Strife! Reno, you're a talented fellow."

" He hasn't defected," Tseng says. " As far as I can tell," he adds, glancing at Cloud warily.

" First of all, fuck all of you, second of all, let's go," I snarl, pulling open the buggy door and throwing my duffel bag inside.

" Are you sure you want to do this?" Elena asks Vincent as he steps toward the buggy.

" I feel it is my duty," he says absently, climbing in past her. Elena looks to Cloud, raising an eyebrow.

" How about you?" she asks.

" I'm fine," he mutters, climbing inside. Tseng shakes his head, but goes around to the driver's side as Rufus climbs clumsily into the passenger seat, still wrapped in his blanket and chuckling merrily at his realization that Cloud is the person I've been going back to the enemy camp to see. I know it's partly a cover, that he's probably hurt and humiliated and worse, but I'm sure he is genuinely amused at my choice as well. I huddle with Elena in the back of the car, Cloud and Vincent sitting in front of us, both trying to appear stoic, Vincent more successfully than Cloud.

" So where are we headed?" Tseng asks Vincent as we drive out of the city.

" To the western continent," he answers.

" The western _continent_?" Rufus says, letting the blanket drop away as he turns back to frown at him. " I didn't know that – I didn't arrange for sea or air transportation."

" I'm sure you still have some connections in Junon," Vincent says, not without a hint of derision.

" Junon isn't exactly Shinra friendly anymore," Rufus mumbles, turning. " Dammit it all to hell. We're going to have to think on our feet here, Tseng."

" Yes, sir."

I scoff with dramatic flair in the backseat, and Tseng looks up into the rearview mirror to glare at me.

" Why didn't Rude come?" Elena asks me, tapping my knee before Tseng and I can melt each other's faces off with our stares.

" Because Scarlet thinks Rufus is a moron, and she won Rude over with that argument," I say loudly. " Nearly got me, too, maybe I should have listened to her."

" Oh, probably," Rufus muses from the front seat, still giggling.

" So is anyone going to tell me exactly what we're doing?" I ask the group at large.

No one speaks.

" That's what I thought," I huff, folding my arms over my chest and slumping down against my seat. Elena squeezes my shoulder and leans down to whisper in my ear:

" I don't know anything about why we're doing this, and to tell you the truth, I don't think Tseng does, either."

" Terrific," I mutter, looking over at Cloud. He smiles at me, completely inexplicably. I shake my head at him, unable to even believe that this is happening to me. I wish I could crawl across the backseat and put my head in his lap, let him mess with my terrible hair, let him _win_ already. But I can't get near him or Rufus during this little road trip.

Something tells me that both of them are going to try their hardest to make that as difficult as possible. As we ride further out of Midgar I realize that, when we come back, I'm going to have to weasel my way out of limbo. I'm going to have to chose a side, one way or another.

Because you can never go back to Midgar, not really, not the way you left it.

* * *

A/N: This is a shorter chapter, but I think it serves its purpose as a transition back to the present. Was it too dialogue heavy? My writing tends to skew toward dialogue rather than description, and I'd like to know if readers think there should be at least some attempt at more of a balance . . . you will get more descriptive passages in the next chapter, as new places and scenarios will be introduced. Let me know what you think!

And thank you as always for your thoughtful reviews! They mean so much to me.


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